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BOOKS BY JAMES RICHARD JOY.
AN OUTLINE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
.. $ I oo
(WITH J. H. VINCENT,)
AN OUTLINE HISTORY OF GREECE
50
AN OUTLINE HISTORY OF ROME
The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.
STUDIES FOR 1890-91.
An Outline History of England. Joy $1 00
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AN
OUTLINE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
BY
JAMES RICHARD JOY
NEW YORK
CHAUTAUQUA PRESS
C. L. S. C. Department
ISO Fifth Avenue
1890
The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by
a Council of six. It must, however, be understood that recom-
mendation does not involve an approval by the Council, or by
any member of it, of every principle or doctrine contained in the
book recommended,
Pa, 3:i
THE LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS
WASHINGTON
Copyright, 1890, by Hunt & Eaton, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York.
PREFATORY NOTE.
It is of prime importance that the books of the Chautau-
qua Reading Course should be clear, concise, and accurate.
The author has endeavored to comply with this threefold
requirement in this Outline History of England. The story
of the growth of Britain, England, and the British Empire
has been compressed within narrow limits, but there has
been no sacrifice of clearness, or of scrupulous fidelity to the
truth.
The author makes no pretensions to originality of research,
and small claim to freshness of statement. He would grate-
fully acknowledge assistance received from many sources ;
would especially own his debt to the following works : A
Short Geography of the British Isles, by J. R. and Alice S.
Green ; Story of Early Britain, by Alfred J. Church ; The
Normans in Europe, by A. H. Johnson ; The Early Planta-
genetSy by William Stubbs ; The Age of Elizabeth, by Man-
dell Creighton; The Puritan Revolution, by S. R. Gardiner;
Oliver CromwelVs Letters and Speeches, by Thomas Carlyle;
The Fall of the Stuarts, by Edward Hale; The Age of Anne,
by E. E. Morris; History of Napoleon, by P. Lanfrey; Con-
stitutional History of England, by Henry Hallam ; History
of Our Own Times, by Justin M'Carthy; History of En-
gland, by Edith Thompson ; Short History of the English
6 Outline History of England.
People, by John Richard Green, and the Universal Historic*
of Plcetz, Labberton, and Fisher. To those readers who care
to fill in for themselves the outlines which are sketched in
this volume, the histories of Green, Freeman, Bright, Stubbs,
Taswell-Langmead, and Hume are recommended.
The Sketch of English Literature, by Henry A. Beers,
which accompanies this book in the Chautauqua reading
course has enabled the author to devote to other matters
the portion of his space upon which the writers of England
had large claim. That work admirably supplements this
history. James Richard Joy.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. PAGE
England— The Island ok the English 13
CHAPTER II.
The Early Britain's and Roman Britain 28
CHAPTER III.
The English Kingdoms 42
CHAPTER IV.
The English and the Northmen 59
CHAPTER V.
The Norman Conquerors *J8
CHAPTER VI.
The Rise of the Barons . . 95
CHAPTER VII.
The Plant agenet Kings 112
CHAPTER VIII.
England and France 128
CHAPTER IX.
Lancaster and York 14(5
CHAPTER X.
The Tudor Monarchs 150
An Outline History of England.
CHAPTER XL Page
The Later Tcdors 178
CHAPTER XII.
The Stuart Tyranny 205
CHAPTER XIII.
The Commonwealth and the Restoration 232
CHAPTER XIV.
The English Revolution 251
CHAPTER XV.
The House of Hanover, or Brunswick 271
CHAPTER XVI.
Conclusion 293
-+++*-
MAPS.
England 12
Britain 44
English Empire 62
Dominions of House of Anjou 96
British Possessions 304
The Sovereigns of England.
THE SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND.
SINCE THE NORMAN CONQUEST.
(1.)
WILLIAM L, b. about 1027, d. 1087,
m. Matilda of Flanders.
I
WILLIAM II. (Rufus),
b. about 1060,
d. 1100.
I I
HENRY I. Adela,
b. 1068, d. 1137,
d. 1135, m. Stephen,
m. 1. Matilda of Count of
Scotland. Blois and Chartres.
I ,1.
Matilda, STEPHEN,
d. 1167, d. 1154,
wi. 2. Geoff veil (Plan- m. Matilda,
tagenet), Count of Countess of Boulogne.
Anjou.
(5.)
HENRY II.
b. 1133, d. 1189,
m. Eleanor, Duchess
of Aquitaine.
Henry,
b. 1155, d. 1183.
(6.)
RICHARD I.
b. 1157, d. 1199.
Geoffrey,
b. 1158, d. 1186,
m. Constance,
heiress of
Brittany.
I
Arthur,
Duke of
Brittany,
b. 1187,
d. 1203.
Note.— The kings are printed in capitals
and numbered in the order of their reigns.
1*
I
(7.)
JOHN,
b. 1166, d. 1216,
m. 2. Isabel of
Angouleme.
(8.)
HENRY III.
b. 1207, d. 1272,
m. Eleanor of
Provence.
I
(9.)
EDWARD I.
b. 1239, d. 1307,
m. 1. Eleanor
of Castile.
(10.)
EDWARD II.
b. 1284,
murdered 1327,
m. Isabel of
France.
<,!.>
EDWARD III.
b. 1312, d. 1377,
m. Philippa of
Hainaidt.
[See next page.']
10
An Outline History of England.
THE
SOVEKEIGNS
(11.)
EDWARD
1
1 I
Edward, Lionel, 1. Blanche,
1
- John of Gaunt, =
= 3. Katharine
Prince of Duke of daughter of
Duke of
Swynford.
Wales, Clarence, Henry, Duke of
Lancaster,
b. 1330, b. 1.338, Lancaster.
b. about 1340,
d. 1376. d. 1368.
(12.) (1
d. 1399.
,>
RICHARD II. Philippa, HENRY IV.
John Beaufort,
b. 1366, m. Edmund b. 1366, d. 1413,
Earl of Somerset.
deposed Mortimer, m. 1. Mary
1399. Earl of Bohun.
March.
1 (14.)
Roger HENRY V.
John Beaufort,
Mortimer, b. 1388, d. 1422,
Duke of
Earl of m. Katharine
Somerset.
1
March. of Frai
1
ice, who =-
5.)
= 2. Owen Tud(
ir.
i a
1
1
Edmund Anne HENRY VI.
Edmunl
Margaret
Mortimer, Mortimer, b. 1421,
Tudor, Earl
Beaufort.
Earl of m. Richard, d. 1471,
of Richmond.
March, Earl m. Margaret
d. 1424. of Cam- of Anjou.
bridge.
I
who was
(19.)
HENRY VII., =
beheaded, Edward,
1415. Prince of Wales,
b. 1457, d. 1509.
b. 1453,
slain at
Tewkesbury,
1471.
(20.) .
1. Katharine = HENRY VIII. = 2. Anne Boleyn. =
3. Jane Seymour.
of Aragon.
(2
b. 1491, d. 1547.
2.) (2-'
,)
(2
10
MARY, ELIZABETH,
EDWARD
VI.
b. 1516,
d. 1558, b. 1533,
d. 1603.
b. 1537,
d.
1553.
m. Philip of Spain.
The Sovereigns of England.
OF ENGLAND— continued.
11
III.
Edmund of
Langley,
Duke of York,
b. 1341, d. 1402.
Richard,
Earl of Cambridge,
beheaded 1415,
m. Anne
Mortimer.
I
Richard Plantagenet,
Duke of York,
slain at
Wakefield, 1460.
I
(16.)
EDWARD IV.
b. 1442, d. 1483,
m. Elizabeth
Wydeville.
i di.)
George, Duke of RICHARD III.
Clarence, b. 1449, d. 1478. b. 1452, d. 1485,
! m. Anne Neville.
Elizabeth,
d. 1503.
(17.)
EDWARD V.
b. 1470.
Richard,
Duke of
York,
b. 1472.
Edward,
Earl of
Warwick,
beheaded
1499.
I
Margaret,
b. 1480, d. 1541,
pi. 1. James IV.,
King of Scots.
Ja-ues V.,
King of Scots,
d. 1542.
I
Mary,
Queen of Scots,
beheaded 1587.
I
(19.)
JAMES I.
b. 1566, d. 1625,
Anne of Denmark.
[See next page.}
Margaret,
Countess of
Salisbury,
beh'd 1541,
m. Sir
Richard
Pole.
Edward,
Prince of Wales,
b. about 1476,
d. 1484.
Mary,
b. 1498, d. 1533,
m. 2. Charles
Brandon, Duke of
Suffolk.
Frances Brandon,
m. Henry Grey,
Duke of Suffolk.
Jane Grey,
beheaded 1554,
m. Lord Guilford
Dudley.
12
An Outline History of England.
THE SOVEBEIGNS OF ENGLAND— continued.
JAMES I.
I
(25.)
CHARLES I.
b. 1600, beheaded 1649.
m. Henrietta Maria of France.
(26.)
CHARLES II.
b. 1630,
d. 1685.
I
(27.)
JAMES II.
b. 1633,
d. 1701.
(28.)
MARY,
b. 1662,
d. 1694.
(30.)
ANNE,
b. 1665,
d. 1714.
WILLIAM III.
James Francis
Edward Stuart,
the Old
Pretender,
b. 1688, d. 1766.
Charles,
Edward
Stuart, the
Young
Pretender,
b. 1720,
d. 1788.
I
Henry
Benedict
Stuart,
Cardinal
York,
b. 1725,
d. 1807.
Elizabeth,
Queen of
Bohemia,
b. 1596, d. 1662,
m. Freder-
ick, Elector
Palatine.
Mary,
b. 1631, d. 1660,
m. William,
Prince of
Orange.
Sophia,
d. 1714,
m. Ernest
Augustus,
Elector of
Hanover.
I
(29.) (31.)
WILLIAM III. GEORGE I.
b. 1650, d. 1702. b. 1660,
rn. d. 1727,
MARY OF m. Sophia
ENGLAND. Dorothea
of Zell.
(32.)
GEORGE II.
b. 1683,
d. 1760,
m. Caroline
of Branden-
burg-
Anspach.
Frederick,
Prince of Wales,
b. 1707, d. 1751.
I
(33.)
GEORGE III.
b. 1738, d. 1820.
m. Charlotte
of Mechlen-
burg-Strelitz.
I
(34.)
GEORGE IV.
b. 1762, d. 1830,
m. Caroline of
Brunswick- Wolfenbilttel.
Charlotte,
b. 1796, d. 1817.
(35.) |
WILLIAM IV. Edward, Duke of Kent,
b. 1765, d. 1837. b. 1767, d. 1820.
Ernest Augustus,
King of Hanover,
b. 1771, d. 1851.
(36.)
VICTORIA,
b. 1819,
m. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
HlSTOPvY OF
AN 01 'LINE
/NGLAND.
-♦•♦-
CHAPTER I.
ENGLAND-THE ISLAND OP THE ENGLISH.
The thoughtful student of the marvelous history of En-
gland, her rise from weakness and poverty to surpassing
wealth and power, will more than once note to what an ex-
tent the physical characteristics of the land have molded
the development of the nation. The simplest of these in-
fluences has been the most effective, and England is now the
ruler of continents mainly because for centuries she was con-
fined to the narrow limits of an island. There first she
learned to rule herself. It was this insular position — dis-
tinct, though not distant, from Europe — that delayed and
restricted the Roman conquest ; this it was which tempted
the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and later left them free to con-
solidate the kingdom they had won; and not until the Nor-
man-French monarchs had lost their continental dominions
and become simply the lords of the island did England take
her rightful place as mistress of the seas and first in the roll
of commercial empires. Sitting thus by herself, removed a
step from her brawling neighbors, England has solved some
of the hardest problems of government. Before proceeding
to the study of the English people we should give some at-
tention to their island home, which has formed their national
character.
The British Isles, of whose area England comprises about
14 Ax Outline History of England.
one half, exceed five thousand in number, though only two,
Great Britain and Ireland, are of considerable size and im-
portance. On the westward the open Atlantic, a thousand
miles wide and a thousand fathoms deep, separates them
from the American continent, and furnishes a roadway for
the commerce of two worlds. The North Sea, or German
Ocean, rolls its shallow waters on the east, offering means of
communication with the Baltic Sea and the hundred harbors
of Northern Europe. To the south the sea is constricted
into the Strait of Dover, where the French sentinel at Calais
may descry the chalk cliffs of England across twenty miles
of choppy waves. The strait relaxes again in the English
Channel, which washes the southern shore of England and
the northern coast of France. Again two channels — the
North and St. George's — with the Irish Sea, furnish a con-
tinuous water-way between the two greater islands of the
British group. In comparison with Great Britain and Ire-
land no member of the cluster merits mention, but others will
figure in this history, and should not be overlooked in this
preliminary survey. North of Great Britain are two rocky
groups, the Shetlands — whose hardy ponies are dear to the
heart of boyhood — and the Orkneys — some seventy weather-
beaten, sea-bird-haunted cliffs. Westward, and not far from
the Scottish coast, are the stormy Hebrides. Among these are
Lewis, Skye, little Staffa, famed for Fingal's Cave, and Iona,
the ancient center of Celtic Christianity. Advancing south-
ward past Islay and Arran, the voyager in the Irish Sea
would reach the Isle of Man, and near the coast of Wales
Anglesey, a sacred seat of the Druid worship of the an-
cient Britons. West of Land's End, at the south-western
angle of England, are the Scilly Islands, a welcome sight to
the eastward-faring mariner, and nestling close under the
southern coast is the fair Isle of Wight. Leagues away to
the southward are cattle-breeding Jersey, Guernsey, Al-
derney, and the other Channel Islands, like British outposts,
England — the Island of the English. 15
but in reality the paltry remnant of the once vast continental
realm of England. The east coast of Great Britain has but
one island that need be named — Holy Isle, in the German
Ocean, near Tweed-mouth.
Great Britain itself comprises about two thirds of the
British group. Its area is 84,000 square miles, with a maxi-
mum length of 600 miles, and a breadth varying from 33 to
367 miles. Although under a single government, it is di-
vided into three sections — Scotland, Wales, and England.
Scotland has an area of 24,000 miles, a length of 286, and a
breadth of from 33 to 160 miles. It is a land of rugged
mountains, beautiful glens, and crystal lakes, but its soil, save
in the southern Lowlands, is thin and its climate harsh, and
neither in wealth nor population can it compare with Wales,
which is rugged, and among its mountain-masses descend-
ants of the ancient Celtic race that Ca?sar found in the
island linger yet. The principality covers 7,400 square
miles, and until the dawn of this century of metals and
steam the Welsh people were as poor as they were scattered.
Mining and quarrying for coal, iron, and slate have changed
this for the better. But it is not Scotland, nor Wales, nor
even the Emerald Isle, that most concerns us. Our theme is
England.
East of Wales and south of Scotland, occupying two
thirds of Great Britain, the choicest territory of the island,
is the country whose history lies before us. It is not exten-
sive, this England — 350 miles from north to south, and no-
where more than 370 from east to west. Its area, stated
roundly, is 50,000 miles. It will make matters clearer to survey
its physical features, note where its mountains rise, where its
great plains are spread out, and whence and whither its
rivers run. The backbone of England is the Pennine Chain,
a line of mountains and high plains, or moors, extending
southward from the Scottish border to the heart of the king-
dom, where it ends in the Peak of Derbyshire. On the one
10 An Outline History of England.
side — west — of the Pennine range is a knot of lofty mount-
ains, the Cumbrian Hills, among which rise the summits of
Scafell (3,162 feet), " the brow of mighty Helvellyn " (3,118
feet), and Skiddaw (3,054 feet). In the folds of these
mountains are the lakes Windermere, Ulles Water, Derwent-
water, Thirlmere, Buttermere, and Coniston Water, which
make this " lake district " the most picturesque region in
England, and a favorite haunt of poets. East of the Pen-
nines is the great plain of York, curving around the Peak
and joining the central plain. A range of uplands sepa-
rates these plains from the valley of the Thames, which
stretches its fertile length nearly across the kingdom, and
from the Severn valley, which cuts off the Welsh highlands
from the gentler levels of the east. Cornwall, the narrow
south-western prolongation of England, is mountainous, like
Wales, but the greater part of southern England is a rolling
country traversed by four ranges of uplands or high plains, the
Oolitic, Chilterns, North Downs, and South Downs. The first
is of limestone, the three latter are of white chalk, and ter-
minate respectively in Hunstanton Point, the Forelands, and
Beachy Head. These four ranges converge from the east
coast to Dorsetshire, the region between the Bristol and En-
glish Channels. North of them, beyond the valleys of Thames
and Severn, lies the mining and manufacturing center of the
world, drawing its sustenance from the iron, coal, and lead of
the Pennine Chain, the wool from the northern and southern
grazing lands, and the cotton of both hemispheres.
The water system of England is simple. Navigable seas
surround the island, fine harbors indent its coasts, and many
rivers traverse its plains and thread its valleys. The deep
bays and prominent headlands give to England and Wales
a coast line 1,800 miles long. The eastern shore is generally
low and level. The rivers that enter the German Ocean are
the Tyne, which flows through the northern coal-beds, the
Tees, the Humber, which gathers to itself a sheaf of streams—
England — the Island of the English. 17
the Trent and Ouse among them — the Wash, a shallow bay
receiving the slow moving waters of the expanse of marsh-land
known as the fens of Lincolnshire, and the Thames, the
main water-course of Great Britain. The south coast runs
through many variations of height, from the low chalk cliffs
of Dover to the iron-bound masses of the Cornish promon-
tories. Its rivers are few and of no moment, but the arms
of the sea, which embrace the Isle of Wight, provide the
splendid harbors of Portsmouth and Southampton, and far-
ther toward the west is Plymouth Sound, the head-quarters
of the royal fleet. Rounding Land's End and coasting
northward, the sailor enters the broad waters of Bristol
Channel, the estuary of the Severn. North of Wales the
rivers Dee and Mersey discharge into the Irish Sea
through broad mouths, the former now choked by "the
sands o' Dee," the latter the second sea-port of the realm.
The Ribble cuts another deep notch in Lancashire, a little
south of the wide Bay of Morecambe, which receives the
Lune and other southward-flowing waters from the Cum-
brian hills. The northerly meres and torrents find their way
into Solway Firth by the Eden and Derwent.
The climate of the British Isles is remarkable. The group
lies between parallel 50° and 60° of north latitude, as far
north as Labrador or Central Russia, yet the temperature is
mild throughout the year. It is their insular position, and
especially the proximity of the warm ocean-river, the Gulf
Stream, which sweeps past their western shores, which secures
to these islands warmth and evenness of temperature and
plentiful moisture.
Ireland is as warm as Virginia, and the air of the Isle of
Wight is nearly as mild as the climate of France and Italy.
The mean temperature of London is much higher than that of
New York. The stranger in Great Britain is most invpressed
by the frequent and copious rains. The prevailing winds
blow from the west, gathering moisture from the evaporating
18 Ax Outline Histoky of England.
waters of the Atlantic. Ireland receives the first downpour,
and the fields of that green island are watered by showers
208 days (average) in the year. The mountains of Britain —
Scottish, Welsh, and English— next intercept the heavy clouds.
The rain-fall upon their western slopes is enormous — seven
feet every year in some districts. These waters reach the sea
in short and rapid torrents. The eastern counties have but a
moderate amount of rain, but nowhere is the land too dry for
pasturage, and in general the humid atmosphere nourishes
the lawns, fields, and hedge-rows, which give luxuriant color
to the English landscape. Coupled with warmth of climate,
this moisture makes the soil productive of rich crops of
cereals. Wheat thrives almost every- where, and barley and
oats in the north. Ireland's chief crop is potatoes, though
•flax is much cultivated. Grazing is successful in all parts
of the United Kingdom, and the best breeds of horned cat-
tle and sheep bear the names of the English counties and
islands where they were bred.
Moor and fell, lake, stream, and chalk cliff remain much as
they were when the first Greek or Roman discoverer set foot
in Britain, but among these the modern traveler or student
finds new names and places that mark the island as the hab-
itation of man. England has a political geography no less
interesting than the physical features which we have enu-
merated, and at the outset we shall do well to impress upon
our minds its leading facts — the counties and towns of En-
gland, their names, positions, and characteristics.
With the help of a map we shall again commence at Ber-
wick, on the river Tweed — the English Rubicon — and, mov-
ing southward, note them in succession.
The first of the forty English shires, or counties, is North-
umberland, the old border-land where English Percy and
Scottish Douglas met in frequent foray. The Tweed on the
north and the Tyne on the south form outlets for the rich
coal-measures which contribute to the prosperity of North
England — the Island of the English. 19
Shields and Newcastle-on-Tyne, the latter city ranking after
London and Liverpool in trade. Durham, which lies next,
between the Tyne and Tees, surpasses its northern neighbor
in the variety of its industries. Its coal-beds are extensive.
Near them is iron ore. And its river valleys are checkered
with fertile farms. Durham, the shire-town on the Wear,
is a quiet little city with a famous cathedral church. Sun-
derland and South Shields are the other cities. York, the
greatest of the shires, occupies the plain between the Tees
and the Humber, drained by the dozen streams which swell
the latter river through the channel of the Ouse. In the
center of this rich farming district is the city of York, one
of the oldest of English towns, and prominent in the chroni-
cles of war and peace, 'Church and State. It has a splendid
cathedral, the seat of one of the two Anglican archbishops.
Moors and uplands rich in metals and coal skirt this river-
basin, and at the south-western angle among the Pennine
foot-hills populous manufacturing cities have sprung up
around the woolen-mills of Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, Hud-
dersfield, and the edge-tool shops of Sheffield. Hull, on the
Humber, is the port for much of the export trade in the prod-
ucts of these factories. For convenience the great county
is divided, its three districts — the North, East, and West
Ridings — all meeting in the county town of York. Again
two rivers — rather, broad inlets — the Humber and the
Wash, inclose a county. This time it is Lincoln. Lincoln-
shire differs materially from the shires already noticed, hav-
ing no share in the mineral treasures of the Pennine Chain.
Its northern districts, known as the Wolds, are upland past-
ures, but where they fall to the level of the Wash land and
water mingle in the vast marshes called " the fen country."
These fenlands have been diked and drained, and are now
fertile. grass-lands, while countless flocks of ducks and geese
are bred in their sluggish waters. The capital is Lincoln, a
little old cathedral city, and the chief port is Boston — St.
20 An Outline History of England.
Botolph's town — both on the river Witham, and bearing
names dear to Americans. West of Lincolnshire the river
Trent drains an inland region comprising the four Midland
counties — Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, and Leicester. All
except the last named border the Pennine Chain and delve
for its minerals. In Nottinghamshire was Sherwood Forest,
the haunt of Robin Hood and his greenwood rangers. Not-
tingham is its busy capital, and it has no other large city,
the farming people being dispersed among many market-
towns and villages. Northern Derbyshire contains the rugged
region of the Peak (1,981 feet high), and its eastern section
is rich in coal and iron. Derby is the thriving county seat.
Rich Staffordshire lies next, on the south-west. Coal in the
north, and coal again in the south, alternating with rich beds
of clay, have made the Staffordshire potteries the largest in
England. Stafford, a " shoe-town," is the county seat, but
Stoke-on-Trent is the center of the earthenware manufacture.
In the south are Wolverhampton, with extensive iron-furnaces,
Burton-on-Trent, a brewer's city, and peaceful old Lichfield,
with a much-admired cathedral. The fourth and least of the
midland shires is Leicester. Its pleasant farms lie wholly
south of the Trent, and are watered by the river Soar. Leices-
ter, where court is held and wool is spun and woven, is the
only large city among a score of country towns.
With Lincoln, noticed above, five other shires — Rutland,
Northampton, Huntingdon, Bedford, and Cambridge — are
sometimes classed as counties of the Wash or the East Mid-
lands. Rutland is the smallest shire in England ; the court-
house is at Oakham. The water-shed of central England ex-
tends through long and narrow Northamptonshire; numerous
herds graze upon these uplands, and rivers springing here find
their diverse ways to the Wash, the Severn, and the Thames.
Northampton, the capital, is the center of the shoe-trade, but
Peterborough, with its towering church, is far more inter-
esting. About the farms of level Huntingdon lingers the
England — the Island of the English. 21
memory of one Oliver Cromwell, the sturdiest patriot that
ever tilled an English field; and Bedford, the county seat
of the adjoining Bedfordshire, is better known for its dream-
ing tinker, John Bunyan, than for the straw hats and bon-
nets plaited there and at Dunstable. The last of these six
counties bears the renowned name of Cambridge, its
county seat, where in simpler times the little river Cam was
bridged, and where one of the two English universities has
been for six centuries a center of learning;. The northern
section of the shire is fen-land, like southern Lincoln, and
from the marshes rises the Isle of Ely, a religious center from
the earliest English times. Between Cambridge and the
east coast lie the two East Anglian counties, Norfolk and
Suffolk, the "north-folk" and "south-folk" of the Angles?
who first conquered this district. Farms in the interior, and
fisheries on the sea-board, give employment to the inhabitants.
Norwich is the capital, and Yarmouth — famed for its her-
rings — the sea-port of the northern shire. Ipswich is both
capital and port of Suffolk. In the interior is the historic
Bury St. Edmunds.
The Thames (length, 215 miles) is the chief English river,
and eight counties lie within the region which it drains.
Essex, Middlesex, Hertford, Buckingham, and Oxford lie on
its left bank, opposed on the other shore by Berkshire, Sur-
rey, and Kent. Essex got its name from its East-Saxon
conquerors. AVhere once were the royal hunting preserves
of Epping and Hainault is now a land of farms and rural pros-
perity without large cities. At Shoeburyness, guarding the
Thames-mouth, is the artillery-school of the British army.
The Middle Saxons gave their name to Middlesex, smallest
but one and most populous of all the English shires. Its
capital is Brentford. Westward, by a heath once infested
by Sir John Falstaff and fiercer cut-purses, is Hounslow, and
a few miles to the north is Harrow, the home of a famous
public school. But in comparison with its great city the
22 An Outline History of England.
towns of Middlesex sink out of sight; for within this county
lies the greater portion of London, the greatest city that
the world has known. The population of 4,000,000 souls
gathered here overflows upon the Surrey side of the Thames,
and the docks and warehouses of its abounding commerce line
the river to its mouth. London is the seat of the English
government, and the capital of the world's trade. Hither run
all the roads in England, and hither tend the sails from every
sea. No metropolis of the ancient world is to be compared
with this modern marvel. Middlesex cuts off Hertford from
direct contact with the Thames. This shire has no great
cities, but St. Albans is a town of note in early times. In
Buckinghamshire is Eton, noted like Harrow for its ancient
school. Agriculture is the prevailing industry, as it is in Ox-
fordshire, which adjoins the former on the west. Oxford,
the county seat, has also a cathedral and a university seven
centuries old. In the north-west are the Edge Hills, and in the
center of the county is Woodstock, where the poet Chaucer
lived and wrote The Canterbury Tales. Crossing to the
right bank of the Thames, and following it to the sea, we
pass through Berkshire, another land of farmers, having the
royal residence of Windsor Castle in its north-eastern angle.
The Hampshire Downs, a range of chalk hills which crosses
Berkshire, also traverse the adjacent county of Surrey. Here
the influence of London has turned the farming hamlets into
thrifty suburban towns, and two populous divisions of
the metropolis, Lambeth and Southwark, lie wholly on the
Surrey side. Kent, which lies between Surrey and the Straits
of Dover, is one of the most interesting of this long list of
counties. On this coast are Dover and Folkestone, whence
steam-boats cross to Calais and Boulogne in France. Rams-
gate and Margate, on the Isle of Thanet, are the popular sea-
shore resorts of the London crowds. Canterbury is the site
of a grand cathedral, the seat of the first Anglican arch-
bishop, and perhaps the most venerated spot in the kingdom.
England — the Island of the English. 23
Tunbridge Wells, on the southern border, was the fashionable
watering-place two hundred years ago; at Rochester is an
ancient cathedral, and near by at Chatham is the arsenal of
the royal navy. Deptford, Greenwich, Woolwich, and
Gravesend, which elbow each other for a water-front upon
the Thames, present mile upon mile of docks, crowded with
the shipping of the globe. Marking the mouth of the
Thames is the North Foreland light.
Our traveling student of political geography has now re-
turned from his trip among the Thames counties and may
follow the Channel coast into Sussex, another historical
name derived from the South Saxons. The surface of this
shire is broken by the South Downs, a range of crumbling
chalk hills ending at the Channel shore in Beachy Head.
Between these hills and the North Downs is the Weald, a
plain of clay and sand, which was until recently a tangled
wilderness. Sussex is not populous, but among its coast
towns are Hastings, where William the Conqueror fought, and
Brighton, the most popular beach in England. Chichester,
now decayed, has the court-house and bishop's church. On
the plain of Senlac William won his decisive victory over
Harold, and near by is the ruined abbey of Battle — the mon-
ument of the conquest. The Hampshire Downs, of which
the North and South Downs are the eastern branches, extend
across northern Hampshire, rising in places to the height of
about 1,000 feet. Between their wall and the Channel is a
gently undulating and fertile region, of which the ancient
royal and cathedral city of Winchester is the center. Two
harbors, Portsmouth and Southampton, indent the southern
coast, the former being a naval post, the latter the entry
port of an active commerce with the Mediterranean.
Southampton Water, with its arms, the Solent and Spithead,
divide the Isle of Wight from the Hampshire main-land.
The climate of the island is charmingly mild, and its scenery
very beautiful. West of Southampton Water is a wide
24 An Outline History of England.
tract of woodland called the New Forest. The conquer-
ing Normans laid this country waste to form a game pre-
serve, and it was here that "the red king" lost his life.
Wiltshire, though wholly inland, is linked with this southern
range of counties by its rivers, which flow into the English
Channel, though parts of it are drained by affluents of the
Thames and Severn. Much of its surface is high and barren
— Salisbury Plain and Marlborough Downs. Salisbury is
the capital and cathedral city, Wilton has given its name to
a kind of carpets, Stonehenge is a circle of massive stones
marking, perhaps, the center of the religious exercises of the
Druids. Dorset lies between Wilts and the Channel. Much
of its surface is high, and clay for the Stafford potteries is
almost its only mineral product.
Bristol Channel, a wedge driven far into Britain, splits off
a slender sliver of land, which is divided between the three
counties of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. Somersetshire
borders the Bristol Channel, and is cut in two by the river
Parret. East of this river are low hills and fertile valleys.
There are cathedrals at Bath and Wells, and Glastonbury
was once the site of the most extensive monastery in the
island. West of the river, however, there are few cities ;
masses of rocky mountains take the place of the ridges of
chalk and lime which cross the eastern counties, and few
villages are found in their isolated glens. The rocks of
Devonshire are of the same character, but the mountains rise
higher, and are rich in metals. Exmoor is the name given
to the highlands of North Devon, and Dartmoor to the more
extensive southern plateau. Yes Tor, the Dartmoor summit,
exceeds 2,000 feet in height. Mines of lead, iron, tin, cop-
per, and quarries of valuable building stone enrich South
Devonshire, and have built busy cities at the mouths of the
rivers: Plymouth, Devonport, and Dartmouth. In the plain
between these two strips of moorland are bred the herds of
Devon cattle, and here are the towns of Exeter, another
England — the Island of the English. 25
cathedral city, and Honiton, where lace is made. The point
of this south-western sliver of Britain is the county of Corn-
wall, which is again split at its western tip into the two
headlands — Land's End and Lizard Point. Flinty rocks and
scanty soil form the forbidding surface of the shire, but the
hard rocks of the utmost west are richly veined with lead,
silver, copper, and exhaustless stores of tin. The chief Corn-
ish towns are Truro, Falmouth, and Penzance.
Turning northward from the mineral-bearinor rocks of
Devon and Cornwall, we find a group of six West Midland
counties lying in the valley of the Severn, between Wales and
the already mentioned Midland shires. They are Glouces-
ter, Worcester, Warwick, Monmouth, Hereford, and Salop,
or Shropshire. The first named is an agricultural region,
notable for the wool of its Cotswold flocks, and for the com-
merce and manufactures of its city of Bristol, which trades
extensively with Ireland and the West Indies. Tracing the
course of the Severn northward, one enters Worcestershire, a
land of fertile valleys, rich in farms and orchards. Worces-
ter, its capital, has famous porcelain works, carpets are
woven at Kidderminster, and iron and glass are manufactured
in a busy district at the north. The river Avon, the
main tributary of the Severn, flows midway through lovely
Warwickshire. This is Shakespeare's county, for he was
born at Stratford-on-Avon. Rugby, dear to many genera-
tions of English school-boys, is in the Avon valley. So is
Coventry, where the chaste Godiva rode at noonday, and
Kenilworth Castle, now ruined, where the Earl of Leicester
feasted the august Elizabeth. Beyond the charming valley
is the populous manufacturing city of Birmingham, ranking
fourth in England. Across the Severn, from Gloucester, is
Monmouthshire, taken from Wales by the eighth King Henry.
The Welsh mountain spurs which enter the county from
the west yield coal and iron, and the basin of the river
Usk is fertile. The Wye, which here enters the Severn, has
2
28 An Outline History of England.
come down through the orchards and hop-gardens of Here-
fordshire. The sixth and largest of the West Midland coun-
ties is Shropshire, which the Severn cuts into halves, the north-
ern section low, with fat pastures, the southern mountainous
and sparsely peopled. Its towns are small and unimportant.
The four remaining counties of England — Chester, Lan-
caster, Westmoreland, and Cumberland — are washed by the
Irish Sea and run back to the Pennine Chain. The double
advantage of mineral wealth and easy water communication
has raised them in wealth and population. Cheshire has the
Mersey, with the sea-port of Birkenhead on its northern, and
the sandy Dee, with Roman-walled Chester, on its southern,
boundary. Midway flows the river Weaver, through a valley
whose salt springs were utilized before the invasion of
Caesar. Copper and lead mines, coal-fields and stone-quar-
ries, are worked in the eastern districts, which thus gain
importance as a manufacturing center. But the county of
Lancaster, or Lancashire, stands easily first in manufactures.
Lancaster is a long and narrow county, comprising the iso-
lated lakes and mountains of Furness, the thinly settled
pasture-lands of North Lancashire, and, between the Kibble
and Mersey, South Lancashire, a swarming hive of industry.
The coal-fields of the Lancashire moor-lands and the use of
steam-power have changed this desolate country into a popu-
lous and wealthy section until, as a recent writer says, " the
whole county has now the appearance of one unbroken city
of mills and factories, all busied in the same trade, the weav-
ing, dyeing, and printing of cotton." Bolton, Oldham, Roch-
dale, and Manchester are cities of spindles and looms, and
Liverpool, on the Mersey, the second city of England, and
second sea-port of the world, is the outlet and inlet for the
materials and products of this enormous industry. West-
moreland, which only comes down to the sea at the head of
Morecambe Bay, is the most mountainous and barren, and,
consequently, the least populous, of the English counties.
England — the Island of the English. 27
Yet the poets have lived there and written of the glories of
Helvellyn and the beauties of Windermere, and this lake
country has a charm for the artist and sight-seer. Cumber-
land, wedged in between Westmoreland, Scotland, and Sol-
way Firth, completes the tale of forty shires. It includes
the northern lakes and mountains, and has mines of coal and
lead. Carlisle, one of the oldest towns in Britain, is its
capital.
Thus we have made the circuit of England as it is to-day.
We must now turn from this busy scene of crowded cities,
of bustling harbors, great factories, and deep mines. The
beginnings of English history go back to a time when no
Englishman dwelt in Britain and a half-civilized Celtic race
tilled the plains and hunted in forests of the island.
28 An Outline History of England.
CHAPTER II.
THE EARLY BRITONS AND ROMAN BRITAIN. 55 B. C.-410 A. D.
The people who call themselves English make no pretense
of being the original proprietors of their England. The first
ship-load of their pagan ancestors who crossed from the
Scandinavian and German coasts of Europe and disembarked
upon the eastern and southern shores of the island, in the
fifth century after Christ, found the country already in pos-
session of a partially civilized and Christianized Celtic race —
the Britons. But it is probable that even these were preced-
ed by another people, for the Roman pioneers, who reached
Britain five centuries before the first Englishman set foot there,
describe besides the Celts a swart, curly-headed people dwell-
ing in the interior. This second nation, sometimes called Silu-
rian, was perhaps related to the Iberians of early Spain, as the
Celtic Britons were surely akin to the Celtic Gauls of France.
Of the Silurians we merely know that they existed in the
island when it was first visited by observing Europeans. Of
the Celts there is something further to remark. It is now
generally believed that the table-land of Central Asia was the
mother-land of many races which in successive pulse-beats
of population started forth to people the lands which lay to
the west and south. This family of nations is variously
named Aryan, Indo-European, and Indo-Germanic. To it
belong most of the tribes which peopled Europe at the dawn
of history, including the Hellenes, of the Greek countries;
the Italians, from whom sprang the Romans, and the multi-
tudinous races of northern Europe — the " barbarians," who
first called forth the sneers, and afterward the fears, of
Greece and Rome.
The Early Britons and Roman Britain. 29
From evidences of location and language it has been de-
termined that the Celts were among the first Aryan families
in Europe. They settled in Helvetia (Switzerland) and
Gaul (France) in prehistoric times. A grain of credibility
in the legendary history of Rome is that the hordes of
Brennus, a Celtic chieftain, ravaged Italy and sacked Rome in
the time of the kings (390 B. C). The unceasing westward
movement of the Aryans, the later nations pressing the early-
comers down into the peninsulas of the west, had already
driven the non-Celtic race, which we shall call Silurian, across
the English Channel, leaving a remnant hidden away among
the Spanish mountains, who seem to survive to-day in the
curious Basques of the Pyrenees. A portion of the Celts,
obeying the same impulse, followed on the heels of the
fugitives. All these movements probably took place very
slowly, and no record of them has ever been found. The
Celts of the British Islands are of two branches, the earlier
Gaels — still represented by the Irish and the Scottish High-
landers — and the Cymri, who originally held most of southern
Britain, but whom we shall see retiring before the German
invaders, and finding refuge in the mountains of Corn-
wall and Wales, where the language and national type is
still to be found.
The history of early Britain, and, in truth, of early En-
gland, is even more difficult to trace with certainty than that
of Greece or Rome ; for the people of classic antiquity
early took on civilization, and preserved written chronicles of
events in their national life. Britain, remote from the intel-
lectual lights, peopled by long-untutored barbarians, and
twice or thrice submerged in wars of foreign conquest by
yet ruder races, furnishes the most meager material for
filling in the outline of her story. Legends there are in
abundance connecting the islanders with the tales of JEneas
and the Trojan founders of Rome, but they are too fanciful
to claim a place in sober history, and we must pass them by
so V\ OuTLiin Bisromi of Ench vm>.
to learn what wo may of the actual condition and events in
the island pro v ions to the advent of the English in the n ear
149 A IV '
Some have fancied that the fearless mariners ot* the The-
nioian cities [N re and Sidon, at the eastern end ot the Med-
iterranean Sea -groped their way between the Pillars ot' Her-
. S ,\ called the Strait of Gibraltar, and coasted
northward to the Germ*!) Ocean a thousand years before
the b Christ, in which ease the shores of Britain would
..nlv ha\e tempted them to land, and its ores would have
tarnished lading for their little vessels. This mineral
wealth was &ari} fa R Herodotus, "the Father of
.. hbottl 450 B, (X, speaks of the
■• V:w Islands," making unquestioned allusion to the tin lodes
M rail, Still the richest in the world. One hundred
v writer Aristotle speaks of two great
; in the oeean, inhabited by British and called
\ ltd (erne, names still clinging to the British Isles,
— the SC< 1 is now spelled llibernia.
v . .\ i . ;\ . i v iMassilis (Marseilles), in Gaul, vis-
ited
marsh and its asts He stated als
neestors of the ( sn Is, South
Downs, . Dei as graaed in the oak open-
i on the upland pastures Wheal ' e round growing
» coast, and - urns must be built
- forbidd more
assl - Qaul 1 sn j Sicily.
. v ic not
seek. The an-
•■..'■ 58 B. CL,
s .. which his ambition demand-
l r.\e-\ i rs' orship in
intry iuhal
The Early Britons and Roman Britain, 31
by tribes of Celts, simple, rude, but in a way warlike, brave,
and chivalrous. These tribes he reduced to subjection to
Rome in a scries of brilliant campaigns, the records of which
be kept with bis own hand, and soon published in his
Notes on the War in Gaul. To these books we turn and find
rich information. As Caesar's conquests progressed among
the tribes of western Gaul, his efforts were hampered by the
succors which his enemies received from the .Britons, a kin-
dred people, who lived on a great island, distant but a few
Leagues from the main. Harassed by their interference, and
am bilious of new laurels, the Roman gathered a hundred
little vessels and two legions of men, near Cape Grisnez, in
France, for the invasion of Britain. A reconnoitering galley
returned with small information, and chiefs of several island
tribes came professing submission. Setting sail before day-
break, on August 27, 55 ]>. C, Caesar sighted the white
cliffs near Dover early in the forenoon. The watchers on the
heights gave the alarm, and late in the afternoon, when the
Romans attempted a landing, the shore (near Deal, in mod-
ern Kent) was lined with fiercely yelling Britons, horrible
with war-paint, and driving their heavy war-chariots up and
down the beach. The ships had to anchor far down the sand,
and the legionaries, cumbered with armor, must wade ashore
through tumbling breakers, in the face of arrows and javelins.
Once landed, their victory was easy, and in obedience to
Caesar's iron discipline they fortified a camp and rested from
battle and labor. In a few days the neighboring British
tribes sued for peace and sent in hostages, but, the Roman
fleet being damaged by storms, the Britons plucked up cour-
age and made a sudden attack upon a Roman foraging party,
which was only saved by the promptness of the commanding
general. A few days more of bad weather convinced Caesar
that the autumn gales were approaching. He won another in-
decisive battle over his besiegers, and then ingloriously sailed
away in his racked vessels, having secured little booty and
32 An Outline History of England.
no conquest to show for his three-weeks' campaign among
the men of Kent.
This did not satisfy him. Early in the following summer
Caesar collected an armament of 800 small vessels, with 30,000
foot and 2,000 horse, near Boulogne, on the east side of Dover
Strait, and on July 20, 54 B. C, again turned his prow to-
ward Britain. This time the landing was unopposed, and the
army, hastily disembarking at Deal, marched a few leagues
inland and took by storm the strong palisade and earth-
works to which the Britons had retreated. It was two weeks
before the Romans could follow up their advantages, and
meanwhile the painted Britons were crowding into Kent to
expel the intruder. Tribal feuds were laid aside in the face
of the common peril, and one Cassivelaunus — so Caesar spelled
the Celtic name Caswallon — was made leader of the horde.
With the courage of numbers and a righteous cause the
Celts engaged the legions in repeated combats, hurling their
chariots through the Roman lines, the horsemen leaping to
the ground and engaging the infantry hand to hand. But
their successes were few and temporary. The veterans of
five campaigns against the Gauls were not to be stampeded
by the rudely armed and undisciplined islanders, and it was
not long before the Britons, checked and disheartened, fell
away from their chief and sought their own safety, tribe by
tribe, in submission. Caesar followed Caswallon northward
across the Thames and took his stronghold. In early au-
tumn the campaign was closed. The Romans withdrew across
the channel, leaving no garrison, but taking many noble
youths as hostages to secure peace and the payment of trib-
ute. How regularly the tribute money was paid no records
tell. Other events turned Caesar's face eastward, and he
never revisited the island.
This is what Caesar said of the inhabitants : " The interior
of Britain is inhabited by a race said to be aboriginal ; the
coast regions by invaders from Belgium, whom war or foray
The Early Britons and Roman Britain. 33
has brought thither, and who have afterward settled in the
country. There is a large population, the buildings being
numerous and closely resembling those of Gaul. Cattle form
their chief possession. For money they use copper or iron in
bars of fixed weight and value. Tin is found in the interior,
and iron sparingly near the coast. Whatever copper they
use is imported. They have the forest trees of the main-land,
except the beech and fir. It is forbidden by law to eat the
flesh of hare, goose, or chicken, and these creatures are do-
mesticated for mere amusement. The island has a milder
climate than that of Gaul.
" Of all the tribes the Kentish men stand first in civiliza-
tion. They dwell on the sea-board, and differ little in cus-
toms from the neighboring Gauls. Farther back from the
coast many tribes sow no grains, subsisting chiefly upon
the milk and flesh of their herds, whose skins form their
clothing. Every Briton stains himself blue with the juice of
the woad, giving him a horrible appearance in battle. The
men shave themselves, excepting the head and the upper lip.
Ten or a dozen men have wives in common."
Of their system of society, government, and religion Caesar
makes little note, but by likening their customs to those of
Gaul he justifies us in quoting for the Britons what he says of
those nearly related tribes. He found,, then, that there were
practically two main bodies in the nation, the people and
the privileged classes. The former were little better than
slaves of their more fortunate masters. The latter class was
twofold — Knights and Druids. The Knights were not the
courtly cavaliers of later feudal France, but were the families
whose wealth or prowess in Mar gave them eminence. The
customs and beliefs of the Druids are still a mystery, although
much thought and more words have been devoted to them.
All that Cresar says of them is :
"The Druids have charge of all matters of religion; they
officiate at public and private sacrifices and interpret the
34 An Outline History of England.
omens. The people hold them in high honor, and many-
young men resort to them for education. They decide al-
most all law-suits, judging and passing sentence in civil and
criminal cases, murder, disputed wills, and boundaries. Any
person or tribe that dissents from their decision is declared
an outlaw. Over them all is an Arch-Druid, elected by his
fellows for life. . . . The system is said to have originated in
Britain, and thither go many Gauls to learn its principles.
The Druids are exempt from taxation and free from civil and
military duties. These privileges attract many novitiates,
and many others are sent to them by parents and kindred.
They have to commit to memory a great number of verses,
the full course of training sometimes running through twenty
years. This knowledge of theirs is a sacred secret, and it is
unlawful to write it down, though they employ the Greek al-
phabet in their other affairs. I think they have two reasons
for this : they do not want their system published to the out-
side world, and they hope thereby to cultivate the memory
of their pupils. The chief doctrine of the Druids is that the
soul of man does not perish, but has everlasting life, passing
at the death of one body to renewed existence in the person
of another. Thus, they would incite courage by removing
the fear of death. They have much lore concerning the
stars and their motions, concerning the universe and the
earth, concerning natural objects, and about the power and
purposes of the immortal gods. Such things are the staple
of their discussions, and it is learning of this kind that they
hand down to their young disciples."
Caesar found them worshiping many gods whom he iden-
tified with Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva, of
the Roman religion. Horrible sacrifices he describes of hu-
man beings. There is ample proof of this awful feature of
the Druidic religion, and it is believed that the groves of
sacred oaks were often scenes of consecrated murder. The
oak, its leaves and acorns, were held in veneration, and
The Early Britons and Roman Britain. 35
it is said that the mistletoe, which grew upon its branches,
was the sacred symbol of man, upheld and nourished by di-
vine power. The island of Mona (modern Anglesey) was a
favorite school of the Druids, and it is urged by many that
Stonehenge, the circle of rudely cut gigantic stones, which
has stood on Salisbury Plain from time immemorial, was the
Druid cathedral, as it were, of all Britain, the seat of the
Arch-Druid.
The Britons — Druids, Knights, and Commons — were little
molested for a hundred years, following the terror which
Caesar's advent must have spread among them. Rome was
the only center of action, and the ambition of that same
Caesar kept Roman hands from her foreign foes for three
generations. The Latin poets of the Augustan age make
mention of the Britons — choose the Briton for their type of
the freeman, unsubdued, and " out of the world." The tribute
promised to Caesar may have been extorted now and then
after Augustus had gathered up the reins of power at Rome,
but the actual conquest of Britain was not begun until 43 A. D.
The work was done piecemeal, and was many years in ac-
complishment. We need note only the main events in its
course.
In the year 43 A. D., Claudius, emperor of Rome, ordered
Aulus Plautius, a general commanding in Gaul, to invade
Britain with four legions. Despite their mutinous spirit at
being led " out of the world," Plautius invaded Britain with
40,000 men. He found the country united in resistance under
the two sons of the late King Cunobelin (the Cymbeline of
Shakespeare's play). One of these, Caradoc (Caractacus in its
Roman form), ranks high among the British heroes in the stub-
born struggle. The Roman army seems to have penetrated
from the mouth of the Thames to the valley of the Severn,
winning battles and ravaging the fields. Imperial Claudius
came in person to share in the glories, and returned to Rome
to enjoy a triumph and to add the surname Britannicus to
36 An Outline History of England.
his many titles. Hither also eame Vespasian, a general who
subdued the coast tribes of the south, and marked himself
for future honors at Rome. In 47 A. D. Ostorius succeeded
Plautius, pushing his conquests northward into York and
Lancashire, and founding a military colony at Camulodu-
num (Colchester) to hold the region for Rome. His energy
fired the patriotism of the Britons, and again Caradoc, the
Silurian king, led them to battle (50 A. D.). The natives
fought with desperation, but the soldiers of Rome were vic-
tors, and the British leader was sent a captive to Rome,
whose arms he had resisted for eight years. It is said that
the noble prisoner was much affected by the splendors of the
world's metropolis, and cried out in bitterness, " Strange that
the owners of all this should envy us our miserable huts !"
His life was spared, and he ended his days in obscurity in
" the eternal city."
After the death of Ostorius the feeble generals made little
headway in Britain, but in 58 A. D. (Nero then wearing the
purple) Suetonius Paulinus, a genuine Roman, clear of mind
and strong of will, took command in earnest. From the
Druid's seat at Mona (Anglesey) came the fire-brands that
kept the Britons ablaze against Rome, and it was the plan
of Suetonius to quench this flame by an invasion of that island
(61 A. D.). This he did, landing in the face of a British
army, egged on by ranks of chanting Druids and infuriated
women. The unaccustomed array daunted the soldiers
a moment only; they routed the enemy, put priests and
women to the sword, and leveled the oak forests where the
Druid altars were ready to consume the Roman captives had
the fortune of battle been otherwise. While Suetonius
struck this heavy blow in the west, the east had risen.
Boadicea, queen of the Icenians (inhabiting Norfolk and
Suffolk), had suffered sadly at the rough hands of the Ro-
mans. Pillaged and insulted, her two daugl iters violated, she
vowed revenge. The tribes of the east, maddened by her
The Early Britons and Roman Britain. 37
injuries, and by the cruelty and greed of their Roman mas-
ters, joined her in insurrection. Without warning they fell
upon unfortunate Camulodunum and murdered its helpless
colonists. Suetonius hastened eastward at the alarming news.
He was too weak to save Londinium (London) and Verulami-
(St. Albans), which were laid in ruins — seventy or eighty
thousand men, women, and children fell victims to the rage
of the rebels. The Romans were far outnumbered, and the
Britons had every thing to fight for, but soldier was pitted
against savage, and, as usual, disciplined valor won. The
wretched queen soon died, some say by self-administered
poison, some by disease. Suetonius took such dire vengeance
upon the Icenians and allied tribes that after his recall (61
A. D.) there was no combined resistance to the Roman con-
quest. For nearly twenty years but little was added to the
history of Britain. Roman armies were there, but their
generals were inactive or unsuccessful.
The Emperor Vespasian, however, himself a veteran of the
British wars, put Cnaeus Julius Agricola in command of the
island (78 A. D.). He was both valorous and virtuous, and to
the good fortune which gave hirn the historian Tacitus for a
son-in-law we owe a charming story of his noble life. He add-
ed Wales to the Roman province, and completed the subjec-
tion of Anglesey. Wars with the north Britons took him to
Caledonia, the country since called Scotland, and here, fail-
ing to subdue the clansmen of the Highlands, though beating
them in bloody battles, he fortified the northern line from
Forth to Clyde, re-enforcing this by a second line of forts
from Solway to the Tyne. To the south Britons the rule of
Agricola was a period of peace. They now began to adopt
the ways of life which the Romans had already introduced
among their kindred in Gaul. Fortified towns sprang up at
the mouths of the rivers, trade began to divide with agriculture
and grazing the attention of the people, the mines were
worked to advantage, and the clothing and domestic arrange-
38 An Outline History of England.
ments of Rome were gradually adopted by the children of the
rough woad-stained warriors who had confronted Caesar and
followed Boadicea and Caradoc to battle. The good gov-
ernor who brought about this change was called home (84
A. D.) by the wicked Domitian, with no reward but the con-
sciousness of duty done.
Agricola's successors made no mark in history. For nearly
forty years the southern half of the island gradually took on
the character of a Roman province. It doubtless gained in
wealth in these times of peace, and as its prosperity increased
its northern frontier was the more threatened by the fierce
Caledonians. Hadrian, Rome's vigorous monarch, the memo-
rials of whose travels were set up in nearly every province,
came to Britain (120 A. D.) and gave orders for strengthen-
ing Agricola's southern line of forts. The barrier was after-
ward improved and many times repaired. There are evi-
dences that it was eighty years in building ; and after fifteen
hundred years of decay, destruction, and neglect this relic of
old Rome may still be traced throughout its seventy-three
miles of windings from Wall's End to Bowness.*
* From the description given by A. J. Church in The Story of Early Britain
we condense these facts concerning Hadrian's Wall :
It consisted of five parts : a trench, a stone-wall, buildings for troops, a
rampart of earth, military roads.
1. The Trench. This skirts the northern base of the wall, whatever the
soil, whether earth or rock. Its dimensions vary. The average has been
given as " 36 feet wide and 15 feet deep."
2. The Wall. This was carefully constructed of stone, and its line follows
the highest ground, passing at its highest point over a summit one thousand
feet above the sea-level. Its width is eight feet, and perhaps its original
height was eighteen feet, though now it is much crumbled and broken.
3. Buildings for Troops. These were of three kinds : (a) Fortified rectan-
gular camps lying along the southern side of the wall at intervals of four
miles; (b) mile-castles, smaller camps (fifty feet by sixty feet) at intervals
of a mile along the wall; (c) between each mile-castle were four turrets,
or watch-towers, now mostly in ruins.
4. The Rampart, South of the wall proper, and at a varying distance
The Early Britons and Roman Britain. 39
A generation later Agricola's northern line of forts was
utilized by the Emperor Antoninus Pius as the basis for a
second system of earth-works, known in its prime as the "Wall
of Antoninus, but whose ruins time out of mind the Scots have
called " Graham's Dike." This wall was strengthened early
in the third century by the Emperor Severus, whom the in-
cursions of the Caledonian tribes summoned to protect the
island. He penetrated the highlands with an army, and
among their mists contracted the disease which ended his life
(210 A. D.) in the city of York, then called Eboracum.
The history of the two following centuries is confused in
places, in other places blank. Rome itself was in turmoil,
one soldier after another grasping at the purple and drag-
ging his rival from the throne. Ambitious generals seized
upon such distant provinces as Britain, and held them in
comparative independence until the rise of some stronger
power at Rome re-established the imperial dominion.
This civil strife was fatal to the peace of Britain. The
northern Picts, with the Scots from Ireland, surged over wall
and rampart, plundering and burning in the lowlands, and
hastening back to the glens of the north before the settlers
could rally in sufficient force to punish them. In the fourth
century, as Britain grew more defenseless, these raids were
redoubled. Ambitious generals in the island dreamed of
conquering Rome, and sailed away with the legions never to
return. To the danger from the Celts of the north was
added one more formidable. The long coast-line of southern
Britain tempted the piratical Saxons who dwelt upon the
from it, is the rampart — a trench with bordering walls of stone and earth, one
on its northern and two on its southern border.
5. Roads. A stone-paved military way connected camp with camp, fur-
nishing every means of transport for men and stores. South of the rampart
was a similar road.
The whole work constituted a fortress available against enemies on either
hand. Ten thousand men were needed to defend it properly.
to An Outline History of England.
shores and about the mouths of the German rivers. They
were bold seamen, pagans in religion, unbroken by Rome,
and they swooped down merely for plunder. The Roman
commanders, with their scanty forces, were at their wit's end
to repel them. The imperial city, beset by foes as cruel,
sent but feeble succors. In 367 A. D. the prowess of
Theodosius had driven back Pict, Scot, and Saxon, but only
forty-three years later, when the British cities begged for
aid, the Emperor Honorius sent back the disgraceful mes-
sage: "Shift for yourselves henceforth; Rome cannot help
you." After this the end of Britain came quickly, not from
Celt, but from Saxon, and the making of England was
begun.
Of the internal condition of the people very little is known.
While the south was at peace the northern Avails afforded
some protection from the assaults of the Picts and Scots —
the latter a fierce tribe which had come from Ireland to give
its name to north Britain. The plow-man, the grave-digger,
and the delving builder of our own time contribute what-
ever information we have of the social condition of the British
people. Plowshare and spade have turned up bronze
helmets and battle-axes of Roman workmanship, funereal
urns and baser pots and kettles for household use, and many
coins bearing the effigies of Roman emperors. Remnants of
porticoes and inlaid floors in Roman style have been laid
bare, testifying to the magnificence of the villas which
dotted the pleasant country. Remnants of old Roman city
walls may yet be seen at Chester and elsewhere. The
straight lines of old Roman roads strike across moor and
plain. In the geographical names, -coin (Latin colonia,
"colony") and -Chester (Latin castra, "camp") reveal the
site of early settlements. Although the Roman civilization
prevailed, and Latin was the language of court and Church —
for in the fourth century Christian missionaries had come
to Britain, and one of them, St. Alban, is said to have died
The Early Britons and Roman Britain. 41
for his faith at Verulamium, since christened St. Albans in
honor of the martyr — nevertheless the Roman blood ami
tongue show themselves but slightly in the nation we now call
English. On the Continent — in Italy, in France, in Spain —
Rome made conquests which influenced permanently the na-
tional character and language. Their people, inextricably
mingled now with the conquering tribes which swept down
from the north to the south of the Roman Empire, are still
the " Latin races ; " their languages, strongly individualized
as they have been by the clumsy organs of Lombard and
Frank and Goth, are still the " Romance " languages, and re-
tain a similarity to the speech of Cicero. England stands
apart from these nations. Like them, she was for centuries
a portion of the Roman realm, and, like them, she was over-
run by tribes of heathen Germans, yet out of the long-
welter she comes with not a trace of Roman manners, and
scarcely a Latin word is on her lips.
42 An Outline History of England.
CHAPTER III.
THE ENGLISH KINGDOMS. 410 A. D.-837 A. D.
FROM THE ROMAN EVACUATION TO THE SUPREMACY OP THE WEST SAXONS.
In this and the succeeding chapter will be sketched the
main events in the process of transformation which took place
in southern Britain after the withdrawal of the Roman gar-
risons, which left the Britons naked to their enemies, the Picts
and Scots of north Britain, and the pirates from the German
lowlands. The sources of the history of this period are
choked and for the most part dry. For the British side of
the story the Latin annalists recorded little that has survived,
and on the other hand it was years before the German
conquerors were sufficiently civilized to make and preserve the
formal story of their conquest. The period on which we
now enter opens with the year 410 A. D. For a century
previous there had been a mysterious movement of German-
speaking tribes westward across northern Europe. It was
perhaps another of those pulse-beats of the Aryan race such
as had sent forth the Hellenes, the Latins, and the Celts in re-
moter ages. Some of these German, or Teutonic, hordes
menaced the open frontier of the Roman Empire, and many
times broke through and overran its provinces. The Ro-
man emperors were kept in the field in continual efforts to
check this resistless tide of paganism. To defend Italy and
the eternal city itself the outlying provinces had to be sac-
rificed. In 410 the Emperor Honorius called home to Italy
the garrisons which had held the long lines of the northern
ramparts of Britain and guarded with steady vigilance the
ports along the Channel, It was too late to save Rome j
The English Kingdoms. 43
before the close of the century Odoacer, the German, had
stripped the purple from the last of the Caesars, Augustus the
Little, and Italy became the prey of Vandal, Goth, and Lom-
bard. The Franks poured into Gaul, and, mingling with
the Romanized Celts, formed France and the French nation ;
the West Goths seized upon the Roman provinces in Spain
and founded the Spanish race. We shall soon see how a trio
of German-speaking tribes crossed the channel, made them-
selves masters of southern Britain, and there made England
and the English nation.
It was in 449 A. D., according to the oldest chronicles, that
the English invaders first seized and kept a slice of British soil.
They were Jutes by name, a tribe speaking a dialect of the
German language and coming from the southern part of
the peninsula now occupied by Denmark, although still bear-
ing the name Jutland. South of them and along the sea-
coast to the westward dwelt two nearly related tribes, the
Saxons and the Angles, whom the success of the first
comers soon tempted to similar raids, which ended in the
Anglo-Saxon sovereignty of the island, spreading over it
their English language, and finally giving to it the glorious
name of Angle-land, or England.
Vortigern, British king of Kent, was guilty of intro-
ducing the Jutes into his country. The Picts harassed him,
and the German pirates plundered his sea-board. So his
crafty head conceived the plan of playing off pirate against
Pict, in the hope of destroying both foes. The device called
down his own destruction. Two Jutish chiefs, Hengist and
Horsa, accepted his terms, drove out the Picts (449 A. D.),
and, instead of retiring with their reward, turned upon the
men of Kent and drove them from their homes. Horsa
perished in the war, but Hengist lived long enough to estab-
lish the strong Jutish kingdom of Kent, which at his death
(479) descended to his son.
Before the spirit of Hengist, the Jute, took its flight to
44 An Outline History of England.
Valhalla, the heaven of northern warriors, reports of his rich
prize had crossed the sea, and Ella, the Saxon, with three sons
and three ship-loads of buccaneers, had set sail for this land of
promise, no longer guarded by the Roman buckler. In 411
they landed on the channel coast near the modern Chichester,
and made a place there for their kingdom of Sussex (South
Saxony) by killing or enslaving the luckless Celts. Such terror
of the Saxon name sank into the Celtic mind that the English
traveler still finds himself called a Saxon in Celtic Wales or
in Celtic Scotland. As the British Celts called all the invad-
ers Saxons, from whatsoever tribe they sprang, so the in-
vaders had but one contemptuous term for all the islanders;
they were Welsh (foreigners or aliens) to them, and Welsh
their descendants are called to this day.
The third English kingdom was destined to become the
greatest. In 495, about the time when Ella and his sons
had hewn out Sussex with the sword, two other German
chiefs of Saxon blood, Cerdic and his son, Cynric, came coast-
ing down the channel, and, finding the Jutes settled in Kent
and their kinsmen in Sussex, kept on to Southampton Water,
on whose shores they first set foot and fought the Welsh.
The latter were now thoroughly alarmed at the rise of the
heathen kingdoms among them, and gave Cerdic's men
stiff battle. But the Saxons, though twice beaten off, re-
turned with more ships and Jutish allies, and did finally con-
quer a foothold which grew in the thirty years of Cerdic's
life-time to be Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons.
From this stout Saxon Cerdic, the royal line of England
may be traced through the families of Plantagenet, Tudor,
and Stuart to the present House of Hanover, of which Queen
Victoria is the head. This historic Cerdic, in one. of his
attempts to push his dominion to the north-west, encountered
a British chieftain, Arthur, " the flower of kings," whose
name is interwoven with all the legends of that time, and has
L;.iined new luster in the poetry of our own. At Baden Hill, or
BBXTAIN
IN 597
Longitude West 2 from Greenwich
The English Kingdoms. 4o
Badbury, near Bath, in modern Dorsetshire, this prince met
and repulsed the Saxons, doing the work so thoroughly that
they advanced no farther on that line for fifty years. Here
alone history touches the story of Arthur. The songs of the
Celtic bards took up the tale and made their prince and the
" fifty Knights of his Table Round " the theme of a wonder-
ful story, which, oft-repeated, has gained in charm with each
retelling, and now greets us in .perfection in Tennyson's
" Idyls of the King." After Arthur and Cerdic had departed
the battle raged again, and in 577 a West Saxon monarch
won the valleys of the lower Severn and upper Thames by
his victory at Deorham, in Gloucestershire. In the lower
course of the Thames the Middle Saxons had set up about
London the small state of Middlesex, and in Essex, farther
east, were the East Saxons.
■ It was neither Jute nor Saxon, but their kinsman the Angle,
who occupied the greater part of the country and bequeathed
his name to the whole. Yet history has no clear record of how
or when the Angles came. They settled on the eastern coast
and in the valley of the Trent in the midlands. Between the
Thames and the Wash lay their kingdom of East Anglia, di-
vided between the North Folk and the South Folk (now Nor-
folk and Suffolk counties). North of the Huniber, and extend-
ing beyond the present limits of England, was Northumbria, at
times a united and complete kingdom of the Angles, at another
under the divided sway of Deira in the south and Bernicia
in the north. In mid-Britain was the last of these heathen
States — Mercia, the border or march land. It cannot be said
with certainty when it was founded, nor whether Saxon or
Angle predominated in its population, but its retired position,
and the genius of its monarchs, give it for a time a large
place in the history of the island.
Of all these kingdoms seven, Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex,
East Anglia, Northumbria, and Mercia, were the more im-
portant, and are sometimes grouped together as the Saxon
46 An Outline History of England.
Heptarchy, or rule of seven. But they were in no sense a
league of seven states. No sooner had they overcome the
Britons than they turned their arms against each other.
Their constant wars ravaged the island and kept it weak.
The only unity was that of overlordship, to which from time
to time some strong king, Bretwalda (wielder of Britain),
raised himself and maintained for a few years. The states
had no definite boundaries, but waxed and waned in direct
ratio of their conquests from the Welsh and from each other.
The seventh century dawned upon a Britain one third of
which was British, two thirds English. The division was on
a north and south line. As the map indicates, the Celts had
retired into the hill country of the west, leaving the plains
and river-basins of the east to the German tribes. The un-
subdued west country then comprised West Wales (now
Cornwall), North Wales (the Wales of later times), Cumbria
(Lancashire and the lake country), and Strathclyde, lying on
both sides of the Scottish border. The English had now
thoroughly established their conquest, and they no longer
waged a war of extermination upon the islanders. We may
profitably turn aside from the course of events to learn what
manner of men were these early English who superseded the
Romans as masters of Britain.
Whence they came we know, and we know, too, that they
brought with them the religion, government, and social sys-
tem under which they had lived in the older Angle-land beyond
the German Ocean. Their religion was that of all the North
German and Scandinavian tribes — a belief in many divini-
ties, male and female. Woden, or Oden, the war-god, the
direct ancestor of their royal families; Thor, the thunder-
wielder; Frea, giver of peace and plenty; Saetere, little
known to us, and Tiw, an avenging deity — all these names
we, the children of the north, unconsciously commemorate in
the Tiw's-day, Woden's-day, Thor's-day, Frea's-day, and
SaBtere's-day of our calendar. Eostre, the English goddess
The English Kingdoms. 47
of the dawn, strangely gives name to the Christian Easter.
Nicor, a mischievous spirit, is the " Old Nick" of our common
speech. But, beyond these names and a few local super-
stitions lingering among the English peasants, the old re-
ligion has perished utterly, leaving no lasting impress.
It was not so with the early English system of govern-
ment; the revolutions and changes of a thousand years have
obscured but not effaced the principles which the English
brought with them to their new abode. The German people
were clannish. Those of the same name and family con-
nection dwelt together, forming village commonwealths. The
freemen of the village, the lesser " churls," and the more
wealthy and influential " earls " met in town-meetings to
consider questions of public concern, and to try criminals and
award justice in disputes between freeman and freeman.
Besides these freemen there were many serfs and slaves —
the former personally free, but without political rights,
the latter captives in war, or churls whom desperate poverty
had forced to sell themselves. The tribe, which was made
up of a number of these village communities, had its ealder-
man (alderman), and in their English conquests several tribes
united under a king. The crown was partly hereditary,
partly elective. It remained in one family, but did not pass
by law from father to son. The elders, or wise men (witan),
in their moot or meeting (witenagemot), selected from the
men of royal blood the one best fitted to lead them in war
and guide them in peace. This witenagemot, or council of
the elders, met frequently, and besides electing the monarch
gave him advice in times of need.. Its action may not have
been strictly binding, but he would be a headstrong ruler
w r ho would persist in a course which the first men of his
realm opposed. The king led the armed freemen to
battle, and decided their most serious lawsuits in time of
peace. He owned land like a common freeman, but he had
likewise the management of the public land, or folk-land,
48 An Outline History of England.
which belonged neither to individual nor community, but to
the State. This he granted to his followers in return for
service done — to his best lieutenants in war and to the trusted
body-servants who formed his household, or court, and super-
intended the details of his business. These men were called
the king's thanes, or servants, but their position brought
them such wealth and distinction that they soon ranked
above the older aristocracy (the earls of the village common-
wealths), and thane became a coveted title of nobility. As
the kingdoms increased in extent it became inconvenient for
many of the elders to attend the witenagemot, so that, ex-
cept upon extraordinary occasions, the royal thanes sat
almost alone in the council of the king, though the abbots
and bishops seem to have been associated with them after the
conversion of the island to Christianity.
From the architecture and domestic arrangements of the
Romans to the homely dwellings of the English was a long
step downward. The new-comers were agriculturists and
fiVhtins: men — not traders — and active commercial inter-
course between England and the Continent was interrupted
for years. The farmers bred swine and horned cattle, and
sowed wheat and barley in the better soils. They lived in
rough huts and halls of wood or stone, with no glazed
windows, a hole in the roof for a smoke-flue, beaten earth or
flag-stones for floor, with rushes strewn upon it for carpets.
They sat at meat, instead of reclining in the Roman fashion,
and they ate with knives of steel and spoons of iron or horn.
They were none too nice in table manners, and the English-
man of this period used no forks. Beef and pork formed their
principal food, washed down with copious draughts of ale
and strong mead made from honey. They were hard drinkers
and hard lighters, these early English, and their wild lives
were usually cut short by battle or pestilence. The tankards
and drinking-horns of the period show slight appreciation of
art, and the literature of the heathen time is only relieved of
The English Kingdoms. 49
its barrenness by the single epic poem of Beowulf, com-
posed by an unknown Saxon singer before the migration, and
brought to England in the memory of his fellow-tribesmen.
The English differed in one important particular from the
kindred nations which wrested France, Italy, and Spain from
Rome. Those conquering races adopted the religion as well
as the language, and to some extent the laws, of the con-
quered. Scarcely a British word survives in the English
language, scarcely a Celtic' line in the English face, and it
was no British mission, but one straight from Rome, which
first turned the English pagans from their idols to the living
God. The feeling between the two races was too bitter to
encourage the British Christians to mission-work among the
Saxons. The English invaders came slaughtering and burn-
ing, and the horrified Britons who escaped their axes and
arrows fled westward, cursing the barbarous intruder. The
priest Gildas,tbe one British writer of the period, speaks with
utter loathing of these blonde butchers, " hateful not only to
man, but to God himself." They were scarcely considered to
possess souls worth the saving. Four generations were born
and buried before this horror died away, and intercourse be-
tween the peoples gradually obliterated differences of race.
Yet the Britons sent out one famous missionary, Patrick, the
saint who led in the conversion of the Celts of Ireland in the
fifth century. From Ireland, which after St. Patrick's de-
cease became the seat of an active Christian Church, mis-
sionaries lifted the cross of Christ in the heart of Europe,
on the sea-coast of Holland, and among those Picts who had
once been the terror of the British Isles. It was an Irish
priest, St. Columba, who founded the school and monastery
whose ruins still attract the tourist to the storm-beaten island
of Iona, off the Scottish west coast. Thus, although the British
Church was powerless for good, the earnest and devoted
Irish clergy from Iona shared with the Roman missionaries
the labor and the crown of England's conversion.
3
50 An Outline History of England.
A familiar story recites how Pope Gregory the Great,
when a young clergyman at Rome, was attracted by the faces
of some fair-haired youths in the motley stock of the slave
market. " Who are these ?" he asked of the dealer. " These
are English — Angles," said the man. " What sweet faces !
Surely not Angles, but angels I" (non Angli, sed angeli !)
exclaimed the pitying priest. " Whence come they ?" " From
Deira." " De ira!" was Gregory's Latin comment. "'From
God's ire' verily they are snatched, and they shall come
to know the mercy of Christ! Who rules in that land?"
"iElla." The young man passed on musing, and straight-
way vowed that " Alleluia " should be sung in ^Ella's realm.
This priest afterward became the pope, or head, of the whole
Christian Church except that of Ireland, and set about the
fulfillment of his vow.
Kent was the threshold of Britain. The first Romans and
the first Englishmen had landed there, and Christianity en-
tered by the same door. Ethelbert, the pagan king of Kent,
a king so influential among the neighboring states that the
chroniclers entitle him Bretwalda, had married a Christian
princess, Bertha, daughter of a Frankish king on the other
side of the Channel. The queen was allowed to worship as she
pleased, and it was her pleasure to establish a Christian
chapel in the royal town of Canterbury. To her protecting
court Pope Gregory sent Augustine, an abbot, with a band
of preaching monks, in 597 A. D. King Ethelbert feared
magic, and preferred to meet the strangers from Rome on
the Kentish hill-side rather than in his hall. After a few
months' delay he accepted their religion, and multitudes of
Kentish men professed conversion and were baptized.
Augustine was made Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of
the Church of England, and pressed the evangelizing work
beyond the boundaries of the kingdom. Essex forsook
Woden and Thor and turned to Christ. Bishops were ap-
pointed to the sees of London and Rochester. The British
The English Kingdoms. 51
clergy were invited to aid in the work, but jealousy and cer-
emonial differences interfered, and Augustine kept on alone.
Edwin, king of Northumbria, was the next point of attack.
He is the fifth Bretwalda of the old historians, but in
his boyhood it had seemed unlikely that he would ever rule
even the kingdom to which his birth entitled him. But he
fought himself into his rightful place, on the throne of
Northumbria, and mastered many of his neighbors. Edin-
burgh, on the Forth, was Edwin's burg, or fortress, in the
north. At Chester, on the Dee, he built the fleet with
which he took the islands of Man and Anglesea, in the Irish
Sea. But we must go back a few years to the king's conver-
sion.
His queen, Ethelburga of Kent, was the daughter of
Ethelbert, Augustine's royal convert, and she, like Bertha,
was allowed to worship her God in this heathen court. It is
said that the king was persuaded by Paulinus, his queen's
chaplain, who preached Christ to the king in his witenage-
mot, before his priests and lords. Said a noble:* " So seems
the life of man, O king : as a sparrow's flight through the
hall when you are sitting at meat in winter-tide, with the
warm fire lighted on the hearth, but the icy rain-storm with-
out. The sparrow flies in at one door, and tarries for a mo-
ment in the light and heat of the hearth-fire, and then flying
forth from the other vanishes into the winter darkness
whence it ^ime. So tarries for a moment the life of man in
our sight, but what is before it, what after it, we know not.
If this new teaching tells us aught certainly of these, let us
follow it." King and council were won over to the Christian
side, and the aged high-priest Coin led the band which
desecrated the heathen temple. Thus commenced the conver-
sion of the Northumbrians. In East Anglia the influence of
the Bretwalda, Ethelbert, good Bertha's husband, wrought
the conversion of Redwald, the king, but it is said that the
♦Green's Short History of the English People, p. 21 (Amer. edition).
52 An Outline History of England.
common people clung so fondly to the old gods that the
king allowed Christians and heathen to worship in the same
churches.
After the first triumph of the new faith its outward success
ceased for a time. The conversion of a king did not regen-
erate the hearts of his people, nor always of his own family.
Ethelbert's son, Edbald, was a royal backslider, and the
Christian bishops of that kingdom were discouraged to the
point of leaving the island when, as by miracle, his heart
was softened and Kent reclaimed. Essex also fell into the
old ways, and at Edwin's death (633) the gods whom Coifi had
insulted won back their Northumbrian worshipers.
The defeat and death of the Bretwalda Edwin by Penda,
king of Mercia, introduces a new figure. The Mercians were
so far inland that they had not yet been reached by Augus-
tine's monks. Penda's court would thus become the refuge
of those whom the downfall of the old religion affected in
Kent, Essex, East Anglia, and Northumbria. Priests and
employees of the Woden worship, used to the reverence of
the people and the favor of the king, would in general resist
the entrance of the Roman clergy. The disaffection of the
common people of the partially Christianized kingdoms also
encouraged Penda to raise the standard of Woden and make
war upon Christians in the name of the old religion. A Welsh
prince, Cadwallon, joined his forces with the Mercian army,
and after conquering a wide realm from his neighbors in
central Britain, Penda struck down Edwin of Northumbria,
and Sigbert of East Anglia, and won the title of Bretwalda.
Oswald, the new king, stopped Cadwallon's northward ad-
vance in the battle of " Heaven's Field " (635), fighting under
the standard of the cross. The cross of Oswald was not of
Roman origin. In his youth Prince Oswald had been convert-
ed by the Irish monks of Iona, and when he became king of
Northumbria he summoned missionaries from that monastery,
and not from Canterbury, to labor among his people. Aidan
The English Kingdoms. 53
came and was made a bishop, with his seat at Lindisfarne,
or the Holy Isle, near the mouth of the Tweed. Oswald's
conversion was thorough, and wherever he carried his con-
quests he set up the cross. Wessex, already the preaching-
ground of Gaulish monks, owned his overlordship, and
its king professed his Christ. This isolated Penda and his
heathen kingdom, but they still held out a score of years.
Oswald fell, like Edwin, in battle (642) with the pagan, and
was succeeded by Oswy. Aidan's pious monks of Lindis-
farne never ceased teaching and preaching among the North-
umbrians ; they even found a way to Mercia and to the heart
of King Penda's son, but they could not touch the old king.
He persecuted none, but yielded nothing. In 655 Oswy, of
Northumbria, vowed to give God his daughter and twelve
monasteries if so he might rid his realm of the heathen who
had vexed it. The battle was fought at Winw^ed, and
Penda, the champion of the old religion, there met his
death. Henceforth the Gospel was freely proclaimed in
Mercia, and the last of the English kingdoms accepted the
new faith.
From the landing of St. Augustine in Kent to Penda's
defeat and death was scarcely sixty years, a short time
for the conversion of a land like England. In fact, we must
believe that it was only in courts and towns, and upon the
more cultivated few, that the early preachers made their
impression. The farmer on the moor-land, the peasant in
his hut, the miner, the shepherd, and the fisherman long lived
in utter darkness until the self-sacrificing zeal of the monks
brought the Gospel to their humble doors. The Abbey of
Lindisfarne was the great northern school which trained many
missionaries. Ceadda, or St. Chad (whose memory is still
revered at Lichfield), w r as the evangel of middle England,
and St. Cuthbert, another, is the patron saint of the north
countrymen. Melrose Abbey, in the Scottish Lowlands, w r as
his mission station, whither he returned alter long tours
54 An Outline History of England.
among the villagers. Himself a Northumbrian shepherd boy,
he was nearer to the hearts and lives of his people than were
the Irish monks of Iona and Lindisfarne, and his sowing came
to a rich reaping. The story of his life is beautiful for its
humble service, simple faith, and unselfish devotion to God
and the welfare of his countrymen.
The English Christians of the seventh century were not
united. Each kingdom had its independent bishop and
clergy, and, indeed, the bishops were not of one belief nor of
one practice. While the south-eastern churches looked up
to the Roman pope, as they had been taught by Augustine
and his Canterbury monks, the north, which had been illu-
mined by the light from Lindisfarne, acknowledged the su-
premacy, not of the Roman but of the Celtic Church, which
St. Patrick had nurtured in Ireland and St. Columba had
transplanted to Britain. Both branches were Christian, but
the protracted isolation of the Irish and Roman branches had
given rise to differences between them which tended to bit-
ter strife. The controversy concerned only such slight mat-
ters as the date of Easter, form of tonsure, and minor cere-
monials, but while it lasted it was an evil, and King Oswy did
well to bring it to an end. In 664 he summoned represent-
atives from Iona and Canterbury to the monastery of Whitby,
memorable as the abode of Caedmon, the first English poet,
and bade each party to set forth its case. His decision, which
was for the Roman usages, cleared the way for the unification
of the English Church. Theodore of Tarsus, whom the pope
consecrated archbishop of Canterbury (669), brought order
and system into the religious establishment. His far-seeing
eye laid off the English kingdoms into a larger number of dio-
ceses, each in charge of a bishop, each bishop subject to the
primate or archbishop of Canterbury. (It Avas not until after
Theodore's death that the northern dioceses were gathered
into a second province under the primacy of the archbishop
of York.) The wandering preachers gave place to local
The English Kingdoms. 55
priests, and the churches and chapels, monasteries and
schools, which multiplied in England, gave witness to the
wisdom and skill of Theodore's directing hand. The Celtic
influence, defeated in Whitby Synod, was withdrawn. Col-
man, the abbot, and his monks retired from Lindisfarne, and
the walls of Iona crumbled in neglect. For eight hundred
years the Church of England, the center of its education
and literature, acknowledged the pope of Rome as its earthly
ruler. The result was twofold: England was again linked
to the Continent, whose nations were now all Catholic Chris-
tians, and the unification of the English Church prefigured
and expedited the unification of the English kingdoms.
The English clergy, meeting from time to time in national
councils, foretold that the boundaries of Wessex, Mercia,
and Northumbria, and the lesser states, would vanish and
•give place to one grand English kingdom. The events which
marked the progress of this consolidation extend through
a long period. The English conquests began in the middle of
the fifth century (449); they were substantially completed by
the middle of the sixth, when three fifths of England was
divided among seven superior and a half-dozen lesser Anglo-
Saxon kingdoms. Then followed the successive rise of sep-
arate states to temporary pre-eminence among their neigh-
bors. Some of these we have noticed in our account of the
conversion of Britain, and have seen seven Bretwaldas, the
last three of whom were the powerful Northumbrian kings,
Edwin, Oswald, and Oswy. The son of Oswy extended the
supremacy of Northumbria over Cumbria (now Lancashire
and Westmoreland), and then (685), in battle with the Picts,
lost his life and his country's position. Although Northum-
bria was no longer chief among English states it was a leader
in religious and literary development. Here w r as Lindisfarne,
ever re-appearing in early history ; Whitby, the home of poor
Caedmon, the Anglo-Saxon poet, whose "Song of the Cre-
ation " may have suggested to Milton some scenes of Paradise
56 Ax Outline History of England.
Lost; Wearmouth, whence apostles of the Gospel did foreign
mission-work in Europe, and J arrow, a sacred house famous
for its monk Beda, whose character and learning distin-
guished him as "the Venerable Bede." He was the most
learned man of his time, versed in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and
his mother-tongue, the Low German dialect of the Angles.
The fruits of his study were many books, the most valuable
to us being a Latin history of the English Church, the most
dear to him and his countrymen being, doubtless, the
Anglo-Saxon version of the gospels, which employed his last
hours. He dictated the closing sentences of John's gospel a
few minutes before his death.
Mercia, in the Midlands, awakened from heathenism to
new life, and still ruled by a prince of Penda's Woden-de-
scended line, aimed to reach the high place from which North-
umbria fell. Wessex, on the south coast, the kingdom which
Cerdic founded, but which had remained in obscurity, became
the chief rival of Mercia. The lesser kingdoms owned now to
Mercian, now to West Saxon, overlordship. The kings of
Wessex, as they found opportunity, had steadily driven their
conquests westward to the Bristol Channel, forcing the
Britons to the tip of Cornwall's rocky tongue. Ine, who
ruled for thirty-eight years (688-726), brought British Som-
erset and Jutish Kent under his power, and drew up a laAV-
code which still exists; but he could not conquer the Mer-
cians, who in the next reign made Wessex their tributary
state. Under King Cuthred the West Saxons broke their
Mercian yoke in the fight at Burford (752), and never wore
another of English manufacture.
The three greater English kingdoms no longer fought
solely against each other. Northumbria conquered the
Britons of Strath clyde (756), and tried to guard her coast
from a new foe — the Danes. Under King Offa (755-794)
Mercia turned her arms from her kindred against the
Britons, conquered the Welsh kingdom of Powys, and
The English Kingdoms. 57
built a wall — Offa's Dike — connecting the Wye and Dee
Rivers, and fencing the Celts into the principality of Wales,
which they still occupy. In order to establish the independ-
ence of the Church in his kingdom, Offa persuaded the pope
to consecrate a third English archbishop, whose seat should
be at Lichfield, and whose province should include all bishop-
rics between Thames and Humber, but the arrangement did
not long survive him. Lichfield sank back to an ordinary
bishopric, and the provinces of Canterbury and York re-
sumed their Lite possessions. Canterbury has never lost its
place at the head of the English churches. Offa's kingdom
was no more permanent than his church-establishment. His
weak successors were confronted by Egbert, a West Saxon
king, whom no other English monarch, Angle, Jute, or Saxon,
could withstand. In his youth Egbert had been excluded
from the throne of his ancestor Lie, and had been a fugitive
at Offa's court, and afterward on the Continent, at the court
which Charles the Great (Charlemagne) was making the
most splendid in Christendom. Charles conceived the idea
of reviving the Roman Empire with himself at its head and
the CI mrch as his ally. At Rome, in St. Peter's Church,
on Christmas day, 800 A. D., Pope Leo III, placed upon
Charles's brow the crown of the Roman Caesars. This event
marks the beginning of the modern history of Europe,
and the Holy Roman Empire, which that day's act created,
continued for a thousand years, expiring in the first decade
of the nineteenth century, its life trampled out by the
armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. To this empire England
never became subject; but it is probable that Egbert's expe-
rience in the conquering armies of the emperor, among the
statesmen who helped Charles to organize his realm, and
in that splendid coronation scene at Rome broadened the
mind of the Saxon and qualified him for the throne. The
death of a rival left him king of Wessex (802). By brave
and persistent effort he strengthened his dominions at home,
3*
58 An Outline History of England.
reduced Kent and Sussex, Essex and East Anglia in succes-
sion, defeated the Mercians and gained their submission, and
led a conquering army into Northumbria. To a greater or
less degree all England owned his sway. The old title of
Bretwalda was revived and bestowed upon him, but he was
more powerful than any of his Mercian or Northumbrian
predecessors, and fairly merits the distinction " First King
of the English." He was not the only king in England ;
the old Saxon kingdoms retained their subkings — some were
merely tributary to Egbert of Wessex, some were under his
personal government; but now for the first time since Hengist
and Horsa plunged through the surf to the beach at Ebbsfleet
all England was in some slight degree under the control of a
single ruler. The chronicles of the time are filled witli the
names of Egbert's battles with the Welshmen, and with
Norse viking vessels, but he seems to have stoutly held all
that he won until his death, which took place 837 A. D.
The English and the Northmen. 69
CHAPTER IV.
THE ENGLISH AND THE NORTHMEN. 837 A. D.-1066 A. D.
FROM THE SUPREMACY OF THE WEST SAXONS TO THE NORMAN" CONQUEST.
Before the death of Egbert (837) England was warned of
an approaching danger. The tribes of northern Europe, urged
by some unknown impulse, had recommenced their attacks
upon the nations of the south. The history of the ninth,
tenth, and eleventh centuries runs strangely parallel with
that of the third, fourth, and fifth. In the earlier period the
Roman Empire was overrun by German barbarians; in the
later era these German settlers, now civilized and Christian-
ized, had in their turn to meet the heathen hordes from Nor-
way, Sweden, and Denmark. The Englishmen who had
mastered Britain now met, and after strenuous resistance
yielded to the Danes — the name which in the English chroni-
cle stands for any and all of the Scandinavian people, whether
from Norway, Sweden, or from Denmark itself.
It was in 789, according to the old record, that the Danes
first landed in England, and for a hundred years plunder
was the only apparent object of their incursions. " Vikings "
we call these early pirates, "men of the viks" or bays, in
which they moored their light craft. Their ships were
driven by both oar and sail, and were better manned and
officered than any vessels of the south. Their pirate mas-
ters coasted along the German Ocean to the Channel, Bis-
cay, and the Mediterranean. With matchless audacity they
ascended the Seine and burned Paris, plundered Bordeaux
on the Garonne, took Lisbon in Portugal, Seville in Spain,
and despoiled rich Italian sea-ports. These exploits were
60 An Outline History of England.
performed by single chiefs at the head of swift squad-
rons, who swooped down upon unguarded points and es-
caped with their booty before the stricken people could
gather force to punish them. Although the earlier Danes
made no attempt at an English conquest, they soon
seized upon outlying portions of the British Isles. The
Orkneys, Shetlands, and Hebrides, with portions of the
Scottish Highlands and a large part of Ireland, were early
subject to Danish princes, and the early glory of Ireland — her
Church and civilization — was lost in the confusion of heathen
wars and Danish domination. At times the Danes allied
themselves with the Welsh for a combined assault upon the
English, and it was such a mixed force that Egbert defeated
in his famous fight at Hengestesdun (836).
The successors of Egbert could not maintain his mastery
over the English kingdoms, and some of them had much ado
to hold their own realm of Wessex against the downpour of
Northmen. The old Saxon chronicles abound in notes of
the Danish attacks. Their ships, singly or in fleets,
came almost yearly, and they were only beaten off with
heavy loss. In 851 an armada of three hundred and fifty
Danish vessels entered the Thames and burned the great
trading town of London and the sacred city of Canterbury be-
fore Ethel wolf (837-858), Egbert's son, could drive them back
to their ships. The monasteries of the north were favorite
prey of these Woden-worshipers. The abbeys of Wear-
mouth and Lincoln, Ely, Peterborough, and Croyland were
burned and their inmates ruthlessly massacred. The brief
reigns of Ethelbald (858-860) and the first Ethelbert (860-
866), the elder sons of Ethelwolf of Wessex, were similarly
distracted by incessant calls to arms. While their younger
brother, Ethelred I. (866-871), ruled the West Saxons, the
Danes changed their plan of attack. Abandoning their raids
and sudden forays, they now came to conquer and dwell among
the English. Some Norse sagas, or legends, preserved in the
The English and the Northmen.
61
ENGLISH KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF CERDIC, FROM EGBERT.
EGBERT,
reigned 802-837.
ETHELWOLF,
r. 837-858.
1
1
ETHELBALD,
r. 858-860.
1
ETHELBETIT,
r. 860-806.
1
ETHELRED I.
r. 866-871.
1
ALFRED,
r. 871-901.
1
1
EDWARD,
"the elder,'
r. 901-925.
i
1
Ethelfled,
' " The Lady of Mercia.
••
1
ETHELSTANE,
r. 925-940.
1
EDMUND I.
r. 940-946.
1
EDRED,
r. 946-955.
EDWY,
'r. 955-959.
1. Ethelfled = EDGAR = 2. Elfrida.
I r. 959-975. i
EDWARD 1. Name = ETHELRED II. = 2. Emma of
'the martyr," uncertain. I "the unready." I Normandy = 2. Canute.
r. 975-979. r. 979-1016. I " The Dane,
r. 1017-1035.
EDMUND II. "ironside," Alfred,
r. April 23-Nov. 30, d. 1036.
1016.
EDWARD
"the
CONFESSOR, 1 '
r. 1042-1066.
Hardieanute,
r. 1040-1042.
Edmund,
Edward,
d. 1057,
m. Agatha.
Edgar,
The Atheling,"
elected
king in
1066.
Margaret,
d. 1093,
to. Malcolm 177.,
King of Scots.
I
Matilda,
d. 1118,
w. HENRY I.,
Norman King of
England.
(Son of William Conqueror.)
An 0| vi. inf. Ilisvor. s v\;\
liters loela&d — another of I lc viking conquests — tell
fanciful tales of the northern heroes, II is said that the \i-
king Ragnar Lodbrog stress of' weather upon the
Northumbriai s - - into a pit of serpents by the
_.:sh king, and tidings of his miserable death aroused his
tribesmen to They came in force in 866 and gained
the upper-hand of and Horthumbria. Four years later
they occupied Bas whose subking. Edmund. Mas
offered his freedom if he would exchange his Christianity
for the heathen religion. Savage cruelties followed his re-
- ... The king is ished to a tree, scourged with rods,
made a target for arrows, and finally beheaded. 11 is con-
stancy under torture won for his memory the admiration of
his subjects, and not many years after, when the pagans had
quietly given up their gods for the Gospel, a splendid abbey
(Bury St. Edmund's r en at the order of Canute, the Danish
king, above the grave of M Saint " Edmund. Elatod with
their triumphs, the lords of halt Britain rushed upon Wessex
to complete their conquest. But they found their match at
Ashdum x 7i\ where Ethelred, with his young brother,
Prince Alfred, boat thorn with groat slaughter. The death
I Ethelred in this same year brought Alfred, the last of
Etholwolfs sons, to the throne of Wessex.
King Alfred, "the Groat." was twenty-one years old when
he faood the responsibility of defending and ruling his king-
dom. There still oxists a life of this king, written by tho care-
ful hand of one who know and loved him well. Ilis grace
and beauty markod him as tho favorite in tho group of young
princes, and his father had further distinguished him by
sending him to Rome, at five years of ago, where Pope Leo
IV", consecrated his flaxen head for tho crown it should one
day woar. Tho prince had a busy brain, a strong arm, a
marvelous memory, and loved books as ho did the chase.
In tho first year of his reign ho fought one doubtful battle
with his everlasting enemies, and then enjoyed a few years
/Orkney
The English and the Northmen. 63
of respite while they were strengthening their hold upon the
northern kingdoms. In 876, however, the Danes returned to
Wessex in great force, and could neither be bribed nor ex-
pelled. Alfred, hard pressed, fled from his palace to the
swamps of Somersetshire with a small body-guard. Here,
says a common legend, he sought refuge with a peasant wife,
who, ignorant of his royal rank, scolded him sharply because
he let the cakes burn which she had left him to watch. The
freemen of the south rallied to the standard of the good king
at Athelney, where he raised a fort among the marshes, and
whence he sallied forth in the spring of 878 to try conclusions
with the foe. He won. Guthrum, the Dane, agreed to the
peace of Wedmore, and was baptized into the Christian
faith. The peace saved Wessex, but recognized the Dan-
ish sovereignty of almost the whole of England north of the
Thames valley, the territory called the Dane-law. The terms
of the treaty may not have seemed glorious, but it was the sal-
vation of the West Saxons to enjoy peace at any price at the
moment when the rest of the island was passing through the
storm of war. Only once in the next fifteen years was Alfred
called to battle. In 893 a new influx of Northmen from the
Continent, under Hastings, joined with the men of the Dane-
law and the rebellious Welsh against his rising power; but in
a series of campaigns east and west, led by the king, his son
Prince Edward, and his son-in-law, Alderman Ethelred of
Mercia, the invaders were repelled and the insurrection
crushed (897).
The history of most of the early kings is either filled with
battles or left blank. The reader who has complained of
the confusion of petty wars through which our way has led
thus far must know the fact that until Alfred's reign the
chronicle is bare of real statesmanship, or of recorded prog-
ress in literature and the arts. Alfred was as great in peace
as in war, and greater in nothing than in the moral purpose
which pervaded all his activity. " To live worthily " was
64 An Outline History of England.
his motto. To protect his realm he devised a more effect-
ive military system, and built the first royal English navy.
From the law-codes of the English kingdoms he selected the
best laws for the government of his own people. To the
administration of justice in the law-courts he gave personal
attention, reviewing the decisions of the aldermen and thanes
who sat as judges, and enforcing their awards and penal-
ties upon the more powerful offenders. The king took note
of all the activities of his people; he invented a clock for
marking time by the burning of candles ; he improved their
methods of building, and suggested new and better processes
in the handicrafts. The ignorance that had drifted in upon
the island with the coming of the Danes vexed him sorely,
and he labored like a monk to shed abroad a little of learn-
ing's light. The king himself translated into the Wessex
dialect the histories and religious books of Northumbrian
Bede, and such Latin histories of Europe and works upon
science and travel as he could obtain. Scholars came from
the Continent at his invitation to revive a taste for learning
among the English, and the sons of his nobles were carefully
educated under the royal eye. By him, or by his direction,
the invaluable English Chronicle, a yearly record of events
in the island, was compiled from existing annals and main-
tained long after his death. Kind of heart, simple in tastes
and manner, strong of will, was this first English hero. King
Alfred died in the first year of the tenth century, and at the
threshold of the twentieth we have to confess that no En-
glish sovereign in the thousand years between has surpassed
Alfred in his fitness to rule a nation.
Of Alfred's five children, only one, Edward the Elder,
wore a crown ; one daughter, Ethelfled, married Ethelred,
alderman of Mercia, and another daughter became countess
of Flanders and grandmother of Matilda, the first Norman-
English queen. Edward inherited many of his father's great
qualities. He ruled twenty-four years (901-925), and reaped
The English and the Northmen. 65
the fruits of "Wed more peace. That treaty had saved Wes-
sex from the Danes, and Alfred's military and administrative
reforms had laid the foundations of a stronger kingdom than
any yet known in the island. Edward took the offensive,
and with the aid of his sister Ethelfled, the " Lady of the
Mercians," won back the greater part of the Dane-law.
The Danes of this region had settled down beside the En-
glish, adopting their religion and fitting themselves easily to
the English ways of life. The two races were of kindred an-
cestry, and spoke closely related languages; both had wor-
shiped Woden, and neither had been molded by contact
with the Roman civilization. The lasting hatred which kept
Briton from Englishman was unknown between Saxons and
Danes, whose Christian children, dwelling on adjacent farm-
steads, forgot in time of peace the burnings and massacres of
their heathen fathers. Over this mixed people of the north
Edward gained lordship. All Britain — English, Danish,
W^elsh, Scotch — was subject either to him or to subkings
who acknowledged his superiority. His authority was great-
er than that of any preceding monarch, and in his reign
England advanced far toward a permanent unity.
A writer of the succeeding century — William, a monk of
Malmesbury — describes Prince Athelstan, or Ethelstane
(925-940), Avho was chosen to the throne of Edward, his
father: " He was of proper stature, thin in person, his hair
flaxen and beautifully wreathed with golden threads. Lib-
eral he was of his wealth, humble and courteous toward the
clergy, mild and pleasant to the laity, practicing dignity and
reserve toward his nobles, and greeting the common people
Avith all kindness." The same monkish writer tells of the
king's battle with the Northumbrian Danes, or rather with
Anlaf, a viking who aroused Northumbrians, Welsh, and
Scots against the kino; of the south. The northern league
was shattered in the battle of Brunanburgh, celebrated in
popular song and story for years to come. A few nights
66 An Outline History of England.
before the battle came Anlaf (or Olaf) to Athelstan in
minstrel guise singing and playing in the royal tent. The
Saxon flung him a piece of gold, which the proud Dane
scornfully buried in the earth. A Danish deserter in the
camp recognized his old master, and after his departure told
the king who the minstrel was. Athelstan changed his sleep-
ing-place that night, and wisely, for at midnight the camp
was surprised and the bishop, who slept where the royal tent
had stood, was slain by the false minstrel's men. A few
days later Brunanburgh was fought and Anlaf soundly
beaten. This was the bloodiest conflict yet known in
England. *
* Professor Henry Morley has translated the Saxon poem commemorating
the fight at Brunanburgh, extracts of which are given here :
" This year King Athelstan, the lord of earls,
King-giver to the warriors, Edmund, too,
His brother, won in fight with edge of swords
Life-long renown at Brunanburgh. The sons
Of Edward clave with the forged steel the wall
Of linden shields. The spirit of their sires
Made them defenders of the land, its wealth,
Its homes, in many a fight with many a foe.
Low lay the Scottish foes, and death-doomed fell
The shipmen; the field streamed with warriors' blood,
When rose at morning tide the glorious star,
The sun, God's shining candle, until sank
The noble creature to its setting. There
Lay many a northern warrior, struck with darts
Shot from above the shield, and scattered wide ;
As fled the Scots, weary and sick of war,
Forth followed the West Saxons. . . .
" Then in their mailed ships on the stormy seas
The Northmen went, the leavings of red darts,
Through the deep water Dublin once again
Ireland to seek, abased. Fame-bearing went
Meanwhile to their own land, West Saxon's land,
The brothers, king and Atheling. They left
The carcasses behind them, to be shared
By livid kite, swart raven, horny-beaked,
And the white eagle of the goodly plumes,
The greedy war-hawk, and gray forest wolf,
Who ate the carrion."
The English and the Northmen. 67
The hero of Brunanburgh survived the victory scarcely
three years, his brother, Edmund the Magnificent, succeed-
ing at his death in 940. Athelstan's was a notable reign.
It cemented the parts of England into more perfect union,
and it brought the royal family into new relations with the
outer world. Hugh Capet, the founder of a long line of
French kings, was the son of one of Athelstan's sisters, and
Otto the Great, Emperor of Germany (the Holy Roman Em-
pire), was the husband of another. To show his own inde-
pendence of the empire, which then claimed sovereignty
over Western Europe, the king called himself emperor {im-
perator) of Britain — a title much admired and used by his
descendants. This "emperor" had been Alfred's favorite
grandchild, and in him was some of his grandsire's wis-
dom. It was made easier for the yeoman to obtain justice
in the law-courts, and provision was made to relieve the
wants of the poor. " Frith guilds," * or peace clubs, grew up
among the people.
Edmund (940-946), the new king, was called "doer of
mighty deeds," but what he did he did speedily. Only
eighteen years old at his coronation, he soon lost his hold
upon Nortlmnibria, but before his death, at the age of twenty-
five, he was again its master, and had inspired the restless
Britains of Cumbria|and Strathc-lyde with wholesome fear.
As he sat feasting in his hall on St. Augustine's day Leofa,
an outlaw, entered and sat himself insolently at the table of
the king. In the affray that followed Leofa killed the king.
Edred, Edmund's brother, ruled the island nine years
(946-955) as " king of the Anglo-Saxons and Ca3sar of all
Britain." In his day the Northumbrian Danes made their
final stand under Eric, a prince of the Northmen. Their
defeat marks the end of a kingdom once the leader of
* " Every member of them swore to help his associates in all cases of
need. They were leagues against violence and fraud, benefit clubs, and
burial clubs." — Early Britain, Alfred J. Church.
68 An Outline History of England.
Britain. Their rulers henceforth were earls or aldermen,
instead of the under-kings who had maintained a semi-inde-
pendence of the monarchs of the house of Cerdic. It was
the mind of Dunstan, a Glastonbury monk, that guided
Ed red in the policy by which he claimed that lofty title of
Ca?sar. This young man had been driven from King Athel-
stan's court by the nobles jealous of his learning, his ability,
and his graceful manner. Had he been of Cerdic's royal
line he might have become a second Alfred; as it is he must
be remembered as the first great prime minister of England
— the forerunner of Lanfranc, Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell,
Pitt, Peel, and Gladstone. The brilliant youth of Athelstan's
court, the rising Glastonbury abbot of Edmund's later days,
was the leading statesman of Edred's reign and a bold figure
in the history of the two succeeding monarchs, Edwy and
Edgar the Peaceful. In his early convent life young Dun-
stan had cultivated the powers of head, heart, and hand,
studying the Greek and Roman literature, practicing benev-
olence among the poor, and gaining skill in music, painting,
and the handicrafts. A smith's forge formed part of the
furniture of the cell which his own hand had built for him-
self at Glastonbury, and here, said the legend, St. Dunstan
with red-hot tongs discomfited the tempter who intruded his
worldly nose upon the good man's meditations.
It was probably the wise counsel of Dunstan that arranged
the solemn coronation of Edred. The two archbishops, Can-
terbury and York, representing the united Church of England,
jointly placed the crown on Edred's head, and men from all
the island races — British, English, Danes — shouted applause.
The same purpose, the unification of England under a single
king, dictated the reduction of the Northumbrian kingdom
to an earldom. His interference with the marriage of the
youthful King Edwy (955-959), and his sympathy with the
monks in the controversy then raging between the priests of
the monasteries and the " secular " or parish priests, led to
The English and the Northmen. 69
the busy abbot's banishment. But the king's triumph was
short-lived. The northern earldom revolted, and crownin'sr
his brother, Edgar, placed hini on Edwy's throne (959).
Dunstan came in again on the high tide of the revo-
lution, took his old place at the head of the council, and
was raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury. His rule,
for he ruled, though Edgar's head bore the golden circlet,
was a long stride toward English unity. The conquered
Danes were treated like Englishmen, and their best men
held high rank in Church and State, however much the Sax-
ons growled at the primate's " preference for upstart aliens."
A royal navy, built and manned by the sons of the vikings,
guarded the English coasts and protected English commerce
in the Channel; for England now had a commerce, and a
lively trade sprang up between London and the French and
Flemish cities, the English metals and farm products finding
ready exchange for the fine cloths and manufactures of the
continental towns. This intercourse with Europe bore fruit
in the Church also, and many Benedictine monasteries, pat-
terned upon those abroad, were founded in England. These
were communities of monks, men who, cut off from the world
by their vows of poverty, chastity, and benevolence, devoted
themselves to the works of the Church. The monasteries
owned wide tracts of land, whose tillage brought vast wealth.
These were conservatories of learning, art, and science.
The monks were the* only scholars, and their libraries and
schools were the only sources of learning. In after centu-
ries their spiritual and intellectual eminence declined and left
them rich though worldly, powerful though corrupt. In the
course of the Reformation in the sixteenth century they were
swept out of existence, but it must not be forgotten that
they had their full and splendid share in the making of
England.
Quarrels between the favored monks and the neglected
secular clergy were the chief disturbances of Edgar's peace-
70 An Outline History of England.
ful reign. The island was tranquil. The Welshmen paid
yearly tribute of three hundred wolfs' heads, so says
an old story, until the supply failed. An eight-oared
crew of vassal kings, says another boasting Saxon,
manned the barge which King Edgar steered from his palace
at Chester, on the river Dee, to the Church of St. John.
The death of this "British emperor," in 975, plunged the
prosperous realm into a wretched strife. Two princes,
not yet in their teens, were the only heirs. Edward the
Martyr, Dunstan's candidate, was finally chosen, but in his
sixteenth year his step-mother, Elf rida, had him murdered to
make way for her child Ethelred (979-1016). The little
prince, boy-like, wept at the news of his brother's fate, and
his heartless mother beat him soundly for his tenderness.
When the little fellow grew up, and put on the crown so foully
won, he showed himself no better than his mother. Ethelred
(of noble counsel) she had named him, but his wretched
subjects gave him a name that better suited — the Unready
(unwise or uncounseled), a title of ignobility. Other men
than Dunstan (who died 988) directed the government for
the boy — though there was need of the highest wisdom.
Since Brunanburgh the Northmen had left troubling England,
and had built up their three kingdoms of Norway, Sweden,
and Denmark ; but as the end of the tenth century drew
nigh, their fleets again crossed the shallow German Ocean,
bent on adding England to their Scandinavian Empire. The
"redeless " Ethelred, lacking the spirit of his ancestors who
had vanquished the same foes, levied a tax, the hated Dane-
geld (Dane's-money), upon his people to buy immunity.
This led to fresh incursions. Though the king was cowardly
his people were not. No royal army opposed the invasion,
but brave Englishmen, aldermen and commoners, even
bishops, fought in defense of their own homes. Lack of
union made the resistance futile. The more the king paid
for peace the more peace he had to buy. Thirteen times in
The English and the Northmen. 71
eighteen years parties of Northmen ravaged portions of the
land, rendered helpless by taxation and pillage. On the
thirteenth of November, 1002, the weak and cruel king gave
the signal for the massacre of all the Danes in England.
Among the victims was Chriemhild, a sister of Sweyn (Swegen
or Svend Fork-Beard), king of Denmark and Norway. At
the news of the massacre, since known as the " Danish ves-
pers," he gathered the largest armament that had yet in-
vaded England. Ethelred turned for aid to the Norman-
French across the Channel, and married Emma, the daughter
of Duke Richard II. of Normandy. But he got no real assist-
ance. Sweyn took terrible vengeance for Chriemhild's blood,
and though Ethelred paid him nearly a half -million dollars
to quit the island he sent his lieutenants to kill and burn the
more. In 1013 Sweyn came again, and Ethelred, his author-
ity limited to his native Wessex, found even that little king-
dom unsafe. He fled to his wife's relatives in Normandy.
The news of Sweyn's death, in which Englishmen saw a just
retribution for sacrilege against St. Edmund's shrine, re-
called the worthless Saxon king. His son Edmund II.,
called Ironside — a name of even higher distinction in a
later period — rallied the English against Canute (also spelled
Cnut), the son of Sweyn. The strife continued for a few
months after the death of the Unready, Edmund at Lon-
don and Canute at Southampton dividing the realm.
The death of the Ironside in the same year left no strong
scion of Cerdic's stock, and from 1017 to 1035 Canute was
the sole king of England.*
King Canute was a Dane of royal race, himself the ruler
*THE DANISH KINGS OF ENGLAND.
SWEYN (SWEGEN) FORKBEARD,
d. 1014.
I
CANUTE (CNUT) = Emma of Normandy,
widow of Ethelred.
j HARDICANUTE (HARTHACNUT),
Sweyn. HAROLD I., r. 1040-1043.
r. 1035-1040.
72 An Outline History of England.
of Denmark, Norway, and half Sweden, but he showed the
breadth of his mind by his policy in governing England. His
aim was to be an English king in the eyes of his subjects,
and to this end no distinction was made between the Dane
and English in the land. The king enriched and strength-
ened the Church, although it had been the center of the na-
tional resistance to him and his father, and he honored
Edmund, the martyr-king, by dedicating to his memory the
shrine of St. Edmundsbury. " The laws of Edgar,^' as the
people called the system of government which Dunstan had
established in the reign of that good king, were restored and
administered justly. For better government, he divided the
English realm into four earldoms : Wessex, Mercia, East
Anglia, and Northumberland, their lords or earls being the
most powerful men in the kingdom. Curious legends cluster
about Canute's name. It is said that on one occasion his
flattering courtiers, extolling his power, told him that even
the tide of the ocean would obey his will. The king accord-
ingly caused his throne to be placed on the sands, and there,
arrayed in his royal robes with his flatterers, awaited the
flood. Stretching forth his scepter, he bade the waters
stay their progress. The result is not difficult to imagine
— king and courtiers hastily regained dry land, having
learned a lesson in the limits of human authority. From
that day forward the crown that he had worn was placed
on the image of the crucified Christ.
Canute, who began his reign amid hatred and horror,
died (1035), beloved and reverenced. Two sons, Harold and
Hardicanute (Harthacnut), divided the empire. For two
years there was strife in England, but in 1037 the former
united England under his rule, his brother remaining in Den-
mark as ruler of his father's continental inheritance. While
the crown was weakened by this discord the earldoms gained
in power. The earl of Northumberland was Siward, whose
fame has gathered interest from Shakespeare's play of Mao
The English and the Northmen. 73
beth. Earl Leofric, of Mercia, was the stern husband whose
lady Godiva rode through Coventry streets one famous
noon-day, when
" She took the tax away
And built herself an everlasting name."
Godwin, the stout earl of Wessex, needs no poet to tell
of his lasting renown; his own keen mind and sword have
carved him a place in English history. Earl Godwin, an En-
glishman, whose marriage allied him with the royal family of
Denmark, served Canute faithfully in his life, and is a chief
actor in the multitudinous events which crowd the stage
from this time forward to the Norman conquest. As the
first minister or "justiciar," he had carried out the will of
Canute and his son, Hardicanute, who ruled the island for a
few years (1040-1042) after Harold's death. There is a story,
oft denied and as frequently re-asserted, which accuses God-
win of betraying to the cruel Harold Ethelred's youngest
son Alfred, who came to England in the troublous time which
followed Canute's death, and sought at least a share in the
kingdom of his father. Hardicanute, a drunken and blood-
thirsty Northman, died miserably at Lambeth, near London,
in 1042. Magnus, king of Norway, succeeded to his posses-
sions in Denmark, but Godwin restored the English power to
the exiled heir of Cerdic — Edward, the son of that Ethelred
from whose unsteady hand the rough Danes had wrested the
scepter. This Edward had the weakness, but not the wicked-
ness, of Ethelred. His counselors ruled him, and their quar-
rels disturbed the reign and led to the third and — for eight
hundred years— the last conquest of England by foreigners.
Two parties contended for the supremacy in Edward's coun-
cils. The king himself, though born of an English father,
had been brought up in Normandy — a duchy on the French
side of the English Channel, of which we shall hear much
during the next two centuries. He spoke the Norman-French
language, and brought with him to England a throng of Nor-
4
74 An Outline History of England.
man courtiers, whom he honored with the highest places in
his gift. The immense influence of the English Church was
handed over to the new-comers, in the person of a Robert of
Jumieges, a Norman monk, who exerted a strong man's
power over the gentle king.
It was natural that Godwin,* a born leader, should head the
party which cried, "England for Englishmen!" For a
time the earl maintained his place near the king, and his talents
might have kept him there and curbed the Norman spirit
had not his own ambition wrought his ruin. He used his of-
fice for his own aggrandizement. His daughter Edith was
queen to the fair-haired Edward; two of his sons and his
nephew ruled as earls a large share of the island. Godwin
and the English cause were in the ascendant, but the Norman
courtiers poisoned the ear of the king against the great earl —
told Edward that Godwin had sold Prince Alfred into Har-
old's murderous clutches. Some West Saxons insulted a
Norman count who had wedded the king's sister, and God-
win refused to punish the offenders without legal trial. Two
jealous English earls, Godiva's Leofric and Shakespeare's
Siward, joined forces with Edward and drove the English
champion and his sons into exile (1051). For a year the
Norman party triumphed. William, the duke of Normandy,
visited the king at this time, and afterward swore that Ed-
ward promised that he should succeed to the English throne,
though wdiat right the monarch had to make such promises
does not appear. In 1052 the English had so sickened of
their Norman masters that they hailed with jo v the return of
the old earl and his son Harold. Godwin took oath that he
was guiltless of Alfred's blood. The king received him into
*THE HOUSE OP GODWIN.
Godwin.
I I I
EDWARD, ~ Edith. HAROLD II., Tostig.
THE CONFESSOR," d. 1066.
d. 1066.
The English and the Northmen. Y5
favor, and the French counts, abbots, and bishops were
packed off whence they came. Even the lordly Archbishop
Robert of Canterbury took hasty leave, and a Saxon, Stigand,
became primate of the English Church. The next year was
marked by Godwin's death, but not a Frenchman dared come
back, for Harold, the true son of his father, succeeded to the
earldom of Wessex and the real direction of royal affairs.
He exhibited the statesmanship of his father and a military
talent of his own. While Edward was busy with his chap-
lains founding churches and monasteries — the abbey of
Westminster among them — Harold fortified his own posi-
tion by giving earldoms to his brothers and leading the
English armies to successful war against the Welsh. That he
was clearly the first man in England did not escape Duke
William, who kept keen watch from his neighboring Nor-
mandy. In 1064 Earl Harold, with his vessel, was cast by
mischance upon the French coast and became William's
enforced guest. At a convenient season, two years later,
William declared that Harold had then owned him lord and
sworn to support his claim to the crown at Edward's death.
They say that the duke outwitted the earl by smuggling
sacred relics under the table on which the oath was taken,
increasing the sanctity of the agreement.
Edward died in 1066. The priests, his friends, were also his
historians, and by their grace he is called " St. Edward " and
" Edward the Confessor." There was no son to succeed him.
Of the direct line of Cerdic only Edgar, a stripling, and Mar-
garet, a girl, survived. William of Normandy, as soon as he
heard of the Confessor's death, put in his claim by right of his
wife Matilda's inheritance, by Edward's promise, and Harold's
extorted oath. But Harold alone was able and at hand. The
dying king seemed to designate him for the throne, though he
bespoke for him a short and disastrous reign. The wise men
(witan) elected the most available candidate — Godwin's son,
Earl Harold, already actual ruler and general of the army.
16 An Outline History of England.
King Harold's reign fulfilled St. Edward's direst prophe-
cies. Two mighty foes gathered to crush him. His own
brother, Tostig, then in disgrace, leagued with the king of
Norway, the famous Harold Hardrada, whose spirit had led
him from boyhood upon the wildest adventures, for the con-
quest of England. The Norwegian fleet, swollen by acces-
sions from Ireland and Scotland, sailed up the Humber, and
landed not far from York. At Stamford Bridge the English
Harold gave them battle, first offering his Norse namesake,
who demanded his kingdom, seven feet of English soil for a
grave. The English won, and both Tostig and his giant
ally gained only earth enough to bury them.
But the worst foe was still unconquered. William of
Normandy, claiming the throne as heir, demanding the pun-
ishment of Harold as a perjurer, urging the Normans to
avenge Godwin's insults toward Archbishop Robert and his
followers, and possessing Pope Alexander's blessing as a
missionary to the corrupted English Church — uniting all
parties by these specious claims — had gathered an army and
crossed to Pevensey on the south coast. King Harold hasted
from Stamford to meet the invader. William's army, a
motley array of fortune-seekers picked up from all France
and half Europe, attacked the English position on Senlac
hill, near Hastings. The momentous battle, which took
place October 14, 1066, is known in history under both
names. Much was against the Normans. Their leader had
encouraged them with the pope's blessing, but on landing he
had stumbled and fallen on his face. Rising, his hands full
of sand, he cried to his horrified attendants, " See ! by the
splendor of God, the English soil is already in my grasp."
In the desperate charges upon the English yeomen his cour-
age, audacity, and constancy were every-where apparent.
"The duke is dead," cried a hard-pressed battalion. "I
live!" cried William, lifting the visor of his helmet, "and
by God's help I will conquer." Conquer he did. Harold
The English and the Northmen. 77
and his body-guard stood by the golden dragon banner of
Wessex all day long, until near sunset a shaft from a French-
man's bow blinded the king, and he fell. His English died
around him, and that night William, the Norman duke, who
ate and drank and slept on the field among the slain, was
the real master of England.
Still he was not king. The witan set up young Edgar,
son of Edmund Ironside, but there was no iron in his com-
position, and he and his English adherents soon begged Will-
iam to take the crown, not as conqueror, but as the rightful
successor. On Christmas day, 1066, the archbishoj) of Canter-
bury set the crown upon the head of William the Conqueror.
Harold's death closes the second period of English his-
tory ; William's coronation marks the opening of a third and
grander era in the development of a great nation.
78 Ax Outline History of England.
CHAPTER V.
THE NORMAN CONQUERORS. 1066 A. D.-1135 A. D.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF WILLIAM I. TO THE DEATH OF HENRY I.
"Norman" is "Northman," and the Norman subjects of
Duke William were Scandinavians closely akin to the Danes
who settled in England. Rollo, a Norwegian viking, was
the first duke of Normandy. His piratical ravages upon the
banks of the Seine forced Charles the Simple, king of the
French, to grant to him the lands about the mouth of the
river (912). In return for this territory Rollo gave up his
wild life, acknowledged the sovereignty of Charles, wedded
a princess, and settled down to enlarge the province he had
secured. His people soon adopted the religion, manners, and
language of the country, and became Frenchmen, differing
from their Frankish fellow-countrymen chiefly in physical
superiority and a masterful quality of mind. Under Rollo's
descendants the Normandy was one of the most powerful of
the several dukedoms which made up the French kingdom.
William, who succeeded to the ducal coronet in 1035,
was the seventh ruler in direct line from Duke Rollo, the
viking. Before his name was linked with English affairs his
government of his inheritance had distinguished him as
William the Great. A boy with twice a man's spirit, he
had crowded his way through many obstructions to the chief
place among the vassals of France. Normandy, a prey to
the French feudalisms which divided power among nobles
who waged against each other continual private war, was ham-
mered into comparative order and tranquillity by this iron
duke. His indomitable will and political sagacity fitted this
The Norman Conquerors.
79
DUKES OF THE NORMANS.
ROLF, or ROLLO,
1st Duke of the Normans,
reigned 911-927.
WILLIAM
LONGSWORD,
r. 927-943.
I
RICHARD
THE FEARLESS,
r. 943-996.
I
RICHARD
THE GOOD,
r. 996-1026.
Emma,
m. 1. Ethelred II, of
England,
m. 2. Canute of England
and Denmark.
RICHARD III.
r. 1026-1028.
ROBERT
THE MAGNIFICENT,
r. 1028-1035.
I
WILLIAM
THE CONQUEROR,
r. 1035-1087.
ROBERT II.,
r. 1087-1096
(from 1096 to 1100
Duchy held
by
William),
and 1100-1106
(when he was
overthrown
by
Henry).
WILLIA M
RUFUS,
r. 1096-1100.
HENRY I.
r. 11 06- 11 •S.-
Matilda.
m. GEOFFREY.
"PLANTAGENET,"
Count of Anjou
and 3faine
(who won the Duchy
from Stephen, 1145).
I
HENRY II.
invested with the
Duchy 1150,
d. 1189.
I
Adela,
m. Steiihen,
Count of Blois
and Chartres.
I
STEP HEN,
OF BLOIS.
r. 1135-1154.
RICHAR D
THE LION-HKAKT.
r. 1189-1199.
Norman dukt's in plain capitals.
English kings underlined.
JOHN,
r. 1199-1204
(when Normandy was conquered
by France),
60 Ax Outline History of England.
man of all men to undertake with a few raw troops the con-
quest and government of England.
The battle of Hastings did not complete the conquest,
neither did the surrender of Edgar and the coronation of
William firmly establish the Norman system. Yet the king
dared to quit his new-found kingdom, and hasten over to
Normandy, where the Duchess Matilda ruled the barons as
regent. To his brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux, and his
friend, William Fitz-Osbern, he intrusted England in his
absence. The king's plan was to treat the English as his
legal subjects, not as a conquered people. By his assertion
he was the true successor of Edward, Harold being a usurp-
ing rebel. By the same reasoning Harold's followers were
traitors to their rightful king, and their possessions were
forfeited to the crown. These lands and houses William
granted to the Normans, who had embarked their lives and
fortunes in his expedition, and thus were founded those En-
glish families who boast that " they came in with the Con-
queror." Odo and Fitz-Osbern lacked William's broader
views, and no sooner was his back turned than they began
to persecute the unhappy English for their own advantage.
Money, lands, and houses were wrung from the wealthy
without distinction of guilt or innocence. Such tyranny
aroused the spirit of resistance. Only a fragment of England
had followed Harold at Hastings. The people of the north-
ern earldoms cared little if a Norman should take from the
earl of Wessex the crown which his ambition had acquired.
The nation felt no real attachment for Harold as it did for
Ethelred's children, Edgar and Margaret, now the wife of
Malcolm, king of Scots. But the new tyrannies touched the
life of the people. Every Englishman of wealth or high po-
sition suffered or was liable to suffer at the hands of the
Normans. The signal of revolt went through the island.
Mercia and Northumbria rose under Earls Edwin and Morcar,
relying upon the promised aid of Sweyn with a fleet and
The Norman Conquerors. 81
army of Danes. The Scottish Malcolm added his support to
the movement in the north. The western rebels found allies
in the Welsh. In the eastern fen-lands, upon the borders of the
Norman territory, the outlaw Here ward, " the last of the
English," held Ely with desperate valor. William returned
to face these serried dangers. The Danes, the main-stay of
the insurrection, he bribed into inaction. Isolating the other
centers of rebellion, he attacked them in turn, and in a series
of campaigns comprising nearly four years (1068-1071) he
crushed the rebels singly. Edwin, Morcar, and Ilereward
died or yielded. King Malcolm did homage for his crown,
and all the island, save the west and Wales, was pacified.
The expense of blood and treasure was terrible, but the con-
quest was thorough. In the north, whose subjection, even to
Harold and the predecessors of Edward, had been but partial,
the harshest means were used. Thousands of Northumbrians
were slain, and their land was ravaged until it became a
dreary and almost uninhabited Avaste.
The English were now crushed beyond the possibility of
resistance. Their leaders were dead or in Norman dungeons,
and their spirit was broken to the Conqueror's will. Peace
reigned throughout the kingdom. The soldier-duke whose
sword had accomplished it now came forward and as the
statesman -king reorganized the government of the land
which he had won. Inasmuch as his reforms in the English
system were based upon the Norman constitution, we must
review both of the older governments in order to gain clear
understanding of the new.
Some features of the English governmental organization
have already been explained. Its characteristic was the idea
of home rule. The free people of a village met together to
settle for themselves all minor political matters and to decide
suits at law. The same system was applied to groups or
" hundreds " of these villages ; and a number of " hun-
dreds " formed the shire or county, with its shire moot, or
4*
82 An Outline History of England.
court, where representatives of the " hundreds " met to hear
appeals from the lower courts. The officers of this shire
court were the alderman, bishop, and " shire-reeve," or sher-
iff. The alderman was the representative of the nation, a
sort of lord-lieutenant ; the reeve was the king's personal
officer, and the bishop attended to points of church law.
The judges, or rather the jurymen, were the freemen assem-
bled in the court. If a convicted man appealed from the
judgment of the hundred-court to the men of the shire he
might take the " ordeal," or judgment of God, proving his in-
nocence by walking unshod over hot iron or eating of poisoned
cakes. In general the accused brought " compurgators,"
men who swore to his innocence and general character for
good. The " compurgators, " or oaths-men, cf the plaintiff
swore to the contrary, and the assembly of freemen com-
pared the weight, not of evidence, but of the two parties of
compurgators. In early times " an earl's word balanced six
common churls [freemen] and one alderman's testimony out-
weighed a township's oath." Punishment was commonly by
fines, paid not to the State, but to the injured party. Above
the shires of England, which were rudely yet not unwisely
organized, was the king, and to him in his council of great
men — the witenagemot — the man might appeal from the
judgment of the lower court. The royal power was, how-
ever, ill-defined. Through many changes it had grown to
its proportions under such rulers as Canute and Harold. These
later sovereigns were kings of England as well as of its people.
The public land — folkland — had come to be considered the
property of the monarch, and he might dispose of it at will,
the witan assenting. Those who received land from him, and
many who received none, became his thanes or vassals, owing
him service. The greater thanes he summoned to his witena-
gemot with the abbots and bishops. With this body he made
laws, laid taxes, deliberated on peace and war, and appointed
the officers of state. The system of thaneship extended
The Norman Conquerors. 83
throughout society, the smaller land-owners, and even land-
less freeman, agreeing to do service to an overlord or thane
in return for his protection. Some of these thanes seem to
have acquired authority as magistrates to try law-suits be-
tween their dependents or in the towns (" burghs " or " bor-
oughs ") which sprung up on their lands. Again, certain
towns had purchased from their overlord, or from the king,
the right to hold their own courts, subordinate to the shire-
moot, but of equal authority with the assembly of the hun-
dred. To this brief statement it should be added that the
English shires were allotted among four earldoms — the four
powerful earls being chosen by king and council from the royal
thanes.
In Normandy the feudal system was carried to its full ex-
tent. The king of France was lord of all the land, and every
man who owned a foot of soil rendered military service for
his fief as vassal to a lord. The few great dukes held their
duchies directly from the king, and so long as they paid the
stipulated services they were supreme in their own domin-
ions. These dominions were similarly divided. The duke
— himself a king's vassal — granted his lands to barons, or
lesser vassals, on similar terms of faithful service. The ten-
ants of the barons also did service for the farms they held.
In each case, from duke to smallest farmer, the same cere-
monies and terms prevailed. The land held was the " feu-
dum," or "fief ;" the vassal, or man, swore fealty (fidelity)
and did homage, placing his bare head in his lord's hands, and
on bended knee vowing to become his man through all perils.
This was " feudal tenure," and property so held passed, with
the attendant obligations and privileges, from father to son.
In France this land and social system was a means of gov-
ernment. For with the land the king granted jurisdiction
over its inhabitants, and duke and baron each held his own
manorial court, in which the law-suits of his dependents were
tried. Each tenant of the king contributed a certain num-
84 An Outline History of England.
ber of armed retainers to the royal army ; and these soldiers
of the dukes and barons were frequently employed in private
wars, one baron against another. The whole system tended
away from national unity, for the king himself, when stand-
ing alone, had less power than any one of a half-dozen of his
proudest vassals. It was by feudal tenure that Duke Will-
iam held Normandy from the king of France, and by the
same system his quarrelsome barons held of him. We shall
see how he and his successors combined the Saxon system
with French feudalism.
The English land-owners who fought on Harold's side
were declared guilty of treason, and their lands reverted to
the crown. The rebellions from 1068 to 1071 brought about
the confiscation of nearly all the remaining English estates
of any magnitude. With these William founded his sys-
tem — granting them as feudal manors to the Normans of his
train. He did not transfer the continental system to the
island without changes. The semi-independence of the four
great English earldoms which he had encountered warned
him against granting too extensive fiefs to any one man.
Instead of four earldoms he created nearly forty — an earl to
a shire — and where he would show especial honor he took
care that the lands of any one man should be scattered
throughout England. Warned likewise by the continual
wars of his own barons in Normandy, he exacted from all
freemen, at a meeting at Salisbury (1086), the oath of alle-
giance to himself as sovereign, thus making it treason for any
to obey his lord contrary to the king. William thus became
the real head of the English people, not simply the feudal
sovereign of a few great barons — " tenants-in-chief." He
further laid his hand upon the acts of the people by defining
the sheriff's duties, and making him the ofiicer who attended
to the king's fees and revenues in the courts. While he
gave to the barons jurisdiction over the people of their
manors, it was provided that appeal should run from the
The Norman Conquerors. So
baron to the hundred court and to the king. The old village
courts were left intact, with the added provision of trial by-
battle for Norman offenders. In place of the Saxon assembly
of wise men William gathered about him a Great Council of
his feudal barons, who superseded the English thanes. In
this also sat the high officials of the Church, and a com-
mittee of this body, called the curia regis (court or senate
of the king), acted as a high court of appeals. The Anglo-
Norman system, therefore, was feudal in its tenure of land,
but English in its recognition of local self-government.
Through it all stretched the strong arm of the king, ex-
acting taxes from noble and commoner alike — all classes
alike doing him homage.
Socially the conquest transformed England. At the head
of society stood the king and his Norman barons — proud of
their possessions on both sides of the Channel, despising as
barbarous the common Englishmen and their Anglo-Saxon
tongue. French was the spoken language of the conquerors,
though the lawyers and priests wrote a corrupt form of
Latin. The English thanes disappeared after the early re-
bellions, being slain or deprived of their lands, and so pressed
down into a lower social grade. The middle-class English-
men, dwellers in towns and coming into frequent contact
with the foreigners, soon met them on equal terms in trade
and society. The lowest class, serfs and slaves, suffered noth-
ing by the change of masters, and clung persistently to the
language and manners of the Anglo-Saxons.
The Norman vigor breathed the breath of life into one En-
glish institution. William had been consecrated by the pope
as the reformer of the English Church, and, once master of
England, he placed his charge in the able hands of Lanfranc,
a Norman abbot, reputed to be the most learned man in
Europe. Upon him William conferred the archbishopric of
Canterbury, to which he subordinated the see of York.
The able Gregory VII (Hildebrand), the reigning pontiff
86 An Outline History of England.
at Rome, was determined to extend the feudal system over
Europe by inducing all kings to do him homage for their
kingdoms, and own him for their temporal as well as spirit-
ual master. This William swore he would not do. Peter-
pence he would pay, but homage for England's crown he
owed to no man, nor to any would he give it. He willingly
forbade the priests to marry, and allowed Lanfranc to en-
graft the strict rules of the continental monasteries upon the
lax religious establishments of England. Bishops' courts
were set up in each shire to decide offenses against morals
or religion. But he ordered that without his royal leave
no pope should be acknowledged in England, no papal bull
be read, no bishop appeal to Rome, and no royal tenant be
excommunicated. Thus William thwarted Hildebrand's
scheme of including England in his universal empire, and
thus the trenches were dug for the later foundations of an
English national Church free from papal domination.
Not all of these changes took place in William's reign, but
the beginnings of most of them are found there, though
their course of development runs through more than a
century. In his own life-time the king found much to oc-
cupy his mind on both sides of the Channel. The closing
decade of his life hedged him in with dangers. The barons
of England were galled by the weight of his yoke. In Nor-
mandy they had been almost independent of their duke, but
the modified feudalism of England subordinated them di-
rectly to King William's hand. Appealing to the English-
men against the king's oppression, Roger, son of William
Fitz-Osbern, and other Norman-English earls revolted, but
the royal forces put them down without difficulty (1075-1076).
The next outbreak was in Normandy. William had prom-
ised that his eldest son, Robert, should have the duchy for
his own in case the English expedition were successful. But
King William would not fulfill the promises of William, the
duke. " I shall not strip till I go to bed," was his answer to
The Norman Conquerors. 87
his son's reminder. There were always enough discontented
barons to follow such a leader as Robert to rebellion, and
the war which son declared upon father was prolonged
through three years (1077-1080), when a reconcilation took
place, Robert being appeased by being named heir of his
father's Norman dominions. The king's worst foes were those
of his own household, the sons of his old friends, and his own
half-brothers. One of the latter, Odo of Bayeux — that Nor-
man abbey whose pictured " tapestry " still shows the features
of the Conqueror and his knights — had been intrusted with un-
usual power. He was bishop and earl, but he was ambitious
to be pope, and would have backed his claims with an En-
glish army had not the king unhesitatingly seized him, in
spite of " his sanctity " as a bishop, and cast him into a
dungeon. Denmark, which from this time sinks below the
horizon of our history, gathered an armament for the in-
vasion of England (1085), but it came to nothing, bribes,
gales, and the fame of William's power uniting to undo it.
It was at about this period (1086) that the Domesday
Booh was compiled, and a great assembly on Salisbury
Plain ordered every free man to swear direct and immediate
allegiance to the king as his own sovereign. The object of
the inquiry, which Domesday Book records, was threefold:
" (1) To give a basis for taxation; (2) to serve as an authority
by which all disputed land-titles might be settled; and (3) to
be a census and muster-roll of the nation." At the royal
command census-takers went to the head men in every
shire, borough, parish, and manor, and asked these questions:
" What is the name of your township ? Who was lord
thereof, bishop, or abbot in the reign of Good King Edward ?
How many thanes, how many freemen, and how many serfs
are there ? How many acres and what were they worth in
the Confessor's days ? What property has each freeman ? "
etc. The answers were collected by the royal clerks, and
written down in the book called Domesday, which still
88 An Outline History of England.
exists, giving us an invaluable statement of the condition of
the kingdom of England in the year of our Lord 1086. This
was the closing event in England of William's reign. The
next year saw his miserable death in his fatherland. At war
with his feudal lord, the French king, he took and burned
the town of Mantes. A fire-brand from a blazing building
caused William's horse to swerve, throwing his corpulent
rider heavily upon the pommel of his saddle. The internal
injury soon threatened death. At Rouen, the capital of his
viking ancestor Hollo, the Conqueror breathed his last.
Many prayers and much confession did his thick lips mur-
mur. Eldest son Robert was to have the Norman inherit-
ance ; England he had wrongfully conquered, and he could
not bequeath it, he said, but he hoped God would permit his
second son, William, to rule the island realm ; for Henry,
the scholarly son, there was a certain treasure of five thousand
silver pounds; the remainder of his goods the priests and
monks should have for the poor and the Church. So, deploring
his wicked deeds, and boasting of his better acts, his spirit left
him. His sons hasted hither and yon to secure their inherit-
ance, and the monarch's remains were thrust into a humble
grave in the Norman church of Caen.
William II., called Ruf us (" the red "), lost no time in
reaching England. Lanfranc, the archbishop, the most in-
fluential man of the kingdom, pronounced in his favor, and
the assembly of nobles finally elected him king. There were
dissenting voices, however. The barons holding estates from
Duke Robert and King William were displeased to serve
two masters. In Normandy they were almost independent
of the chivalrous Robert ; in England, they were mastered
by the fierce and tyrannical "red king." For Ruf us had
much of the Conqueror's ability. He was bold in design,
prompt to act, and a stranger to fear. But he lacked his
father's self-control, and for the great man's purity of life he ex-
changed an extravagance and profligacy heretofore unknown
The Norman Conquerors. 89
in England. His uncle Odo, released from custody at Will-
iam's death, conspired with the barons to place Robert in
the red king's seat. This threw William upon the old En-
glish element for support, and well did they give it. With
an English army he quelled the earlier outbreak, and a later
plot, which sought to place his cousin Stephen on the
throne. Three parties we find in the England of those days
— the king, a foreigner ; his barons, rich and powerful, but
rebellious against the overshadowing authority of their
sovereign; and the mass of the common people. From the
interaction of these forces sprang English liberty. A king
hard-pressed by his barons would concede liberties to his
people in return for their assistance, and the barons, tyran-
nized by the king, would unite with the people to force the
king to terms. By such indirect means the problem of
English freedom came to solution.
Among the sins which haunted the visions of the expiring
Conqueror were the extortions and avarice of his closing years.
In this form of misrule his son outstripped him far. The in-
herited treasure the king's wild way of life soon dissipated,
and his ministers were ordered to swell the revenue. They
had recourse to a new form of tyranny. The English Church
owned a large share — some say one fifth — of all the landed
property in England. Bishops and abbots were feudal
princes like the secular barons, and did military service for
their lands. As they were unmarried monks their estates
were not hereditary, and vacancies caused by death or re-
moval were filled by the king. William's chief adviser at
this time was the bishop of Durham, one Ranulf, called
Flambard ("the fire-brand"), a wily but ignorant Norman
priest, who had worked himself high in the Church and in
the king's favor, although he was unscrupulous, and cared
not a whit for the religion of which he was a minister. Fol-
lowing his advice, the king allowed vacant abbacies and
bishoprics to go unfilled for years together, their revenues
90 An Outline Histoby of England.
meanwhile being collected for the royal use. In this way
the highest offices in the Church lay vacant, and the organi-
zation ran a ruinous course. Even the see of Canterbury
had no head for four years after Lanfranc's decease. But
an illness, which dragged William to death's door in 1093,
seemed to his superstitious mind a judgment for his wicked-
ness, and he compelled Anselm, abbot of Bee, in Normandy,
to become archbishop of Canterbury. In his own way this
Anselm was a worthy successor of his friend Lanfranc.
But their ways were diverse. Both were high-minded men,
profoundly learned, and devoted to the Christian Church ;
but the latter was a man of the world as well as of the
cloister, and could lead and control by his will the rough,
unlearned Norman nobles as well as the gentle scholars who
listened to his gracious Avords. Anselm's world was one of
books and meditation, and lay far from that of the head-
strong William, whose recovered strength was put to its first
use in a close-locked struggle with the quiet but unflinch-
ing monk. The question at issue was the supremacy of king
or pope, and Anselm placed the pope's authority above the
monarch's. After four years of obstinate debate the arch-
bishop withdrew to Rome, and William greedily resumed
the rich revenues of Canterbury. Neither side gained much
real satisfaction from this trial of strength, but the noble
example of a single freeman resisting the encroachments
of a king was not lost upon the nation, which had some
questions of the same kind accumulating for settlement at
no distant day.
During the quarrel with Anselm concerning the right of
the pope alone to consecrate an archbishop the king's
hands had not been idle. Malcolm, king of the lowland
Scots, was the center of the old English spirit. His subjects
were mostly of English blood, his wife was Margaret, a prin-
cess of Cerdic's house, and his territories adjoining the hold-
ings of the north country nobles suffered from inroads of the
The Norman Conquerors. 91
robber barons, and from the establishment of the earldom of
Cumberland with the strong fortress of Carlisle to overlook
the border. Malcolm's invasion of England failed, however,
and was followed by a civil war, which brought Edgar, Mar-
garet's son, to the Scottish throne (1097).
Into Normandy Rufus had marched as early as 1091, and
agreed with his brother Robert that on the death of either
the dominions of both should be united under the survivor.
But this treaty was never fulfilled. In 1096 Duke Robert,
his viking blood inflamed with love of adventure, and his
religious enthusiasm stirred by the news that the Mohammed-
ans had captured Jerusalem, joined the counts and barons
of France and Italy who made the First Crusade. To equip
his quota for the expedition he borrowed £6,666 of his
brother William's ill-gotten gain, pledging his duchy of
Normandy in payment of the loan. While the duke was in
Palestine the king made friends of the Norman nobles, and
ruled Normandy so well that he quite supplanted Robert in
the affections of his subjects.
At home the king's acts of oppression multiplied. His
history is a record of vice and gross licentiousness. " Never
day dawned," says one gloomy historian, "but he rose a worse
man than he had lain down ; never sun set but he lay down
a worse man than he had risen." Yet William the Red was
no savage. The castles and churches that he built are noble
structures, as he may testify who is familiar with the ancient
portions of the Tower of London and Westminster Hall.
The Conqueror did heartily love the tall deer, said a writer
who knew him. The chase was his chief sport, and in Hamp-
shire he cleared the tenants from a vast range of farm-lands
and woodlands to make the deer park, which still retains
its first name, "the New Forest." The evicted English
cursed the king for his cruelty in taking their lands, as well
as for the cruel forest laws, by which he kept the game for
his private pleasure, and they declared that the New Forest
92 An Outline History of England.
would be fatal to his line. Indeed, his son Richard died
there, and another Richard, son of crusading Robert. But
William Rufus feared nothing.
He was a mighty hunter, and often rode with his bowmen
after the deer-hounds. But one day, when he had ridden
afield flushed with wine, the forest curse fell upon him.
His huntsmen found him dead under a tree with an arrow in
his breast. No one knows whose bowstring drove the arrow
to its mark. Dying unshriven, he was buried without Chris-
tian services at Winchester, the old West Saxon capital, and
even after his dishonored body rested in the earth the tower
of the abbey church above it fell in ruins, betokening, so
wagged the English tongues, God's righteous wrath.
Prince Henry himself was on that merry hunting party
after the deer-hounds, and when they told him of his brother's
death he spurred his horse to Winchester, seized the royal
treasure, and demanded the crown. By the old. agreement
Robert was the rightful successor, but Robert had not yet
returned from the Holy Land. Henry's promptness gained
the day, and in the words of his proclamation, " by God's
mercy and the common counsel of the barons of the whole
realm of England," he was crowned king. William's rule
had been so hateful and his own title was so doubtful that
the new king made a high bid for popularity. A paper,
or " charter," was granted by the monarch to the nation.
He pacified the barons by releasing them from many of the
feudal assessments on their manors ; better laws — those of
Edward the Confessor — were provided to the common peo-
ple, and the Church was promised immunity from the unjust
depredations of the preceding reign. As an earnest of good
intentions, the king recalled Anselm from Rome, and, him-
self a native of England, took to wife the Saxon Edith,
henceforth called Matilda, the daughter of the king of Scots
and great-grandchild of Edmund Ironside. His fondness for
the islanders was such that the Normans gave the royal pair
The Norman Conquerors. 93
the Saxon nickname " Goodrich and Godiva." Henry I.'s
surname, Beauclerc (" the Scholar "), was not won by any mar-
velous achievements in learning, but by the contrast between
his tastes and those of his father, the iron-willed Conqueror,
and his brothers, the dashing Robert, and William, the red
king. Until his coronation, Henry had lived a life of pleas-
ure on his estates in Normandy; but throughout his reign he
exhibited the force and wisdom of his race. Order was his
first law, and he cared less for fresh conquests than he did
for the submission of his father's subjects to his own undis-
puted will.
In 1101 Duke Robert invaded the island, claiming his in-
heritance, and many barons did him homage and led their
men to his camp, but Henry, supported as William had been
by an English army, and wielding a powerful weapon in
Anselm's threat of excommunication against the rebels, bought
peace. Robert gave up England, and kept Normandy, re-
ceiving a yearly cash payment from the king. The peace was
brief. Henry's vengeance pursued the rebel barons — chief
among them Robert of Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury — till
they sought refuge in Normandy, there to plot his destruc-
tion. Even into his brother's dominions he followed them
twice, defeating the Normans in 1106 at Tinchebrai, and capt-
uring their duke. From this time until his death King-
Henry was master of all the Conqueror's dominions. Robert
died a prisoner at Cardiff, and the efforts of the French king
to re-instate his son William in Normandy were baffled.
If the union of England and Normandy was the event of
Henry's reign, the quarrel with Anselm and the quest for an
heir were its absorbing political questions. The ecclesiastical
struggle was not unlike that of Ruf us's reign. Both pope and
king claimed the right of " investiture " (the ceremony of pre-
senting to the newly elected abbot or bishop the staff and ring
of their sacred office). Should the pope gain this right he
would be enabled to annul the king's appointments. Should
94 An Outline History of England.
the king retain the right he would be the real head of the
Catholic Church in the island. In 1100 Anselm went into
exile rather than yield, but in 1106 Henry recalled him and
found means to compromise the matter, each side retaining a
check on the action of the other.
Henry's hopes for a successor were bound up in the person
of his beloved boy William, " the Atheling," as the English
called this son of a Saxon princess, and from the day when
the White Ship bearing the prince went down (1120) in the
Channel the monarch never smiled. No woman had yet
ruled in England, yet the king compelled his barons twice in
his life-time to swear allegiance to his daughter Matilda, the
widowed empress of Germany. To save her Norman domin-
ions from the neighboring counts of Anjou, he wedded her
again (1 128) to the count's son, Geoffrey the Handsome, a gay
Frenchman, whose habit of decking his cap with a sprig of
common broom (planta genista) gave the name " Plantagenet "
to a line of kings. The fruit of the union was a son, and
before his death (1135) the king had the satisfaction of see-
ing his nobles repeat their oath of fealty to Matilda and the
baby Henry in her arms.
The miseries of the next generation caused the people to
look back with regret to the "good old times " when Henry
I. was king. Yet he had not been a model ruler. Above all
he was a despot. The reforms which he had promised and
the smaller number which he had executed were made in the in-
terest of better order and increased revenue for his own com-
fort and enrichment. He seems to have been entirely reck-
less of the lives and fortunes of his subjects. Yet it so hap-
pened that his selfish policy produced internal peace and really
improved the system of justice. The next reign was anarchy,
but the little Plantagenet, whose birth we have just recorded,
was destined finally to come to the throne, and in along and use-
ful reign to develop the crude forms of his grandfather's time
into the well-regulated government of Henry II. the statesman.
Rise of the Barons. 95
CHAPTER VI.
RISE OP THE BARONS. 1 135 A. D.-1216 A. D.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF STEPHEN TO THE DEATH OF JOHN.
In the story of the twenty years that followed the death of
Henry I. it is easy to find justification for the iron rule of the
Norman kings. The moment the scepter fell from Henry's
grasp hopeless anarchy seized upon the realm.
*Among the Norman barons who swore fealty to " the
empress " and the little Plantagenet prince, was Matilda's
cousin, Stephen of Blois. He was the Conqueror's grandson, a
handsome, hearty fellow ready with sword or song. He was
a favorite with his companions, and the common people ad-
mired him for a liberal and chivalrous knight. Matilda and
her proud Angevin husband were especially disliked in En-
gland when Stephen offered himself without delay as a candi-
* THE CONQUEROR'S CHILDREN.
(Showing descent of Matilda and Stephen.)
WILLIAM I..
" the Conqueror,"
reigned 1066-1087.
1
Duke Robert,
1
WILLIAM II.,
1
HENRY I.,
I
Adela,
d. 1134.
" RUFUS,"
r. 1100-1135.
m. Stephen,
r. 108M100.
1
Count of
Matilda
Blois and Chartres.
"the Empress,"
1
m. 2. Geoffrey,
STEPHEN,
" Plantagenet."
Count of Blois,
Count of Anjou.
King of England,
r. 1135-1154.
HENRY II.,
r. 1154-1189.
King of England,
m. Eleanor of Aquitaine.
1
I I I
Henry, RICHARD I., Geoffrev, JOHN,
d. 1183. r. 1189-1199. d. 1186. r. 1199-1216.
90 An Outline History op England.
date for the crown. His chief support seems to have come
from the city of London, but he was crowned at Westmin-
ster, and having secured the royal hoard, hired an army to de-
fend his claims. Following Henry's brilliant example, he
dazzled the nation with empty promises of reform. But
good fellowship, knightly prowess, and fair promises brought
no happiness to the English. The barons of the realm cared
little for the rights of either claimant to the throne. What
they were quick to recognize was that the accession of a wom-
an or an easy-going courtier left them unbridled. The ad-
ministration of the law grew lax. Bad barons built strong
castles on their lands, whence they might sally to rob the
traveler, or wage war upon the neighboring earl or abbot;
even the good nobles — if such there were — must needs dwell
in fortified houses to save themselves from the outlaws and
robbers.
Foreign invasion and civil war were added to the terror.
David, King of Scots, espoused his niece Matilda's cause,
and hacked and burned his way into Yorkshire, until checked
at Cowton Moor, August 22, 1138, in the battle of the
Standard, in which archbishops, barons, and people united.
The discomfiture of the Scots was complete, the English con-
quering under a standard which upheld a sacred wafer in a sil-
ver box. With the next year came Matilda herself and the
outbreak of civil war. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, one of the
crudest men of these cruel times, was her chief partisan.
Neighbors took sides and fought each other. The war was
made an excuse for pillage, and whoever won the common peo-
ple suffered. Their law-courts were closed, their property
seized, their lives unsafe. The Church did nothing to help
them, and, hopeless in their misery, they said, " Christ and his
saints are asleep." The misfortune of the war was universal,
and its favor rested now with Stephen, now with Matilda.
The king was captured (1141), but was released the same
year and besieged the empress in Oxford Castle, whence she
DOMINIONS
OF THE
HOUSE OF ANJOU
f
Rise of the 13 aeons. 07
escaped by stealth in December, 1142. The Church, Arch-
bishop Theobald at its head, finally delivered England. Its
interference, in 1153, when young Henry Plantagenet had
landed in England to enforce his demands for his mother's
rights and his own, secured the treaty of Wallingford.
Stephen was left to rule in England, pledging that Henry
should reign after his death. That event befell in 1154, and
tlenry II., the first Plantagenet king, was crowned king of
England. Henry was already feudal lord of half of France.
As the descendant of the dukes, he held Normandy and Brit-
tany; from Geoffrey, his father, he inherited the counties of
Anjou and Maine ; Gascony, Poitou, and Guyenne were the
dowry of Eleanor, his wife. For these fiefs he did homage
to the French king, but of England he was absolute lord.
A thorough business man was this first of the Plantagenets.
Though h^had bo^h Cerdic's blood and William's in his veins,
he was neither Norman nor Saxon, and in his reign the
marked distinction between the two races disappeared.
French — and rather bad French at that — was the language
of court and town. But French and English burghers and
courtiers met on equal footing. The king chose his attend-
ants and the officers of his government irrespective of race,
and much work he found for them to do. For himself, he
was never idle. " The hardest worker in the realm," men
called him, as he turned from treasury accounts to diplomacy,
from diplomacy to war, from war to statesmanship.
There was need for such a hard-headed, practical man.
Order must be brought out of the anarchy of Stephen's reign.
He found the system of Henry I. clogged. The barons had
stripped the monarch of most of the power which the Nor-
man kings had reserved to the crown. To reduce them to
their subordinate condition, the king ordered them to pull
down the castles which they had built since Beauclerc's
time. Then he took from the barons the right to try law-
cases, which they had seized when the local and hundred
o
98 An Outline History of England.
courts were closed by civil disorders and neither the king
nor his traveling deputies heard appeals. Not satisfied with
restoring the government, he sought to conform all the busi-
ness of the state to one system of which he should be the
mainspring and center-point. Thus his reign marks a most
important period in the history of English institutions.
Among the clerks of the train of Archbishop Theobald —
the peace-maker — the young king found one Thomas Becket,
or a Becket, the son of a rich Londoner of Norman blood.
The archbishop loved and trusted his clerk, and the king
discovered in him the stuff for a firm friendship. He ad-
vanced Thomas to the chancellorship, the highest civil office,
and the two young men together worked upon Henry's plans
of reform, and on occasions the chancellor (enormously en-
riched by the king) fought beside his master in battle. In
1162 the death of the old archbishop left the see of Canter-
bury vacant, and the king secured the election of Thomas a
Becket to its honors.
Henry proposed to introduce a serious change in the
ecclesiastical system, and with his friend at the head of
the Church he hoped to avoid such strife as had vexed Henry
I. and Rufus in their controversies with Anselm. This
change was no less than the subjection of the ecclesiastical
courts to the jurisdiction of the king. Since the Conqueror
two systems of law and two judicial bodies had existed side by
side in England; the king's courts — from merest town-moot
to the shire-court and the curia regis — and the bishop's court,
which not only tried men accused of offenses against the
church or canon law, but which had jurisdiction over every
person who had taken the tonsure. The penalties in the
bishop's courts were comparatively slight, and many a thief
escaped hanging by claiming " benefit of clergy " (pleading
some connection with the Church), and bringing his case be-
fore the bishop. The king wished to restrict the ecclesias-
tical courts to the trial of causes in which the Church was
IlisE of the Barons. 99
especially concerned. At a great assembly of barons, abbots,
and bishops, held at Clarendon, in 1164, the famous Consti-
tutions of Clarendon were framed to cover this reform. They
re-asserted the " customs " of the Conqueror, declaring the
king's supremacy in the English Church, and they further-
more established the king's right to decide in which court
suits should be brought; to be represented by an officer at all
ecclesiastical proceedings; and to hear and decide appeals
from the bishop's decision. The man whom the king had
made archbishop was more loyal to Church than to king; at
first he wavered, but soon shaping his course he denounced
the Constitution and fled from the kingdom to escape the
tumultuous anger of the monarch. After six years of exile
(1164-1170) the pope's threats forced the king to recall the
primate. The two men acted a hollow reconciliation. There
was nothing in it. Henry could find no patience for the
rebel priest, and four knights who heard his ravings attacked
the archbishop in his cathedral of Canterbury, and slew him
on the altar-steps four days after Christmas, in the year of
grace 1170. In later days pilgrims came in crowds to the
shrine of St. Thomas, that " holy blissful martyr for to seek."
The popular horror of the murder caused the king to aban-
don some of the Clarendon enactments, although throughout
his reign he held the power of the Church well in check.
If the independence of the Church was to be feared, the
arrogance of the barons was still more menacing. In the
beginning the foresight of William I. had cut into their feu-
dal state by requiring all freemen to swear allegiance directly
to the king, instead of the Norman usage of swearing to a
lord who, in turn, vowed fidelity to a duke, the latter doing
homage to the king. Henry II. applied William's principle to
military service. All tenants owed this, but the king allowed
them exemption by paying him a tax called scutage. With
the proceeds of these scutages he employed mercenary troops
for his wars abroad. Thus the barons lost the private armies
100 An Outline History of England.
of personal followers which had every- where in feudal coun-
tries contributed to disorder. By the " Assize of Arms "
(1181) all freemen were obliged to muster armed at summons
from the king. Of more importance to England than the
reforms in Church and army were those which were gradu-
ally engrafted upon the law. These are embodied in several
" assizes." That of Clarendon revived and extended the
"frank-pledge," a police system by which small clubs of
freemen were formed for mutual security. It provided, more-
over, a grand jury which indicted reputed criminals and pre-
sented them for trial by ordeal, by which " judgment of
God" the old system of trial by " compurgators " was super-
seded. In 1216 an order of the Church abolished the ordeal,
leaving the word to our vocabulary, but replacing the
judicial test by a petty jury, such as still remains the basis
of English law.
The "Assize of Northampton" (1176) gave currency
and system to Henry I.'s hap-hazard plan of sending justices
throughout the island to preside at courts in the king's name.
Henry II. divided the kingdom into six such judicial circuits,
and regularly heard appeals from their courts to himself in
the council of his barons, the highest of all judicial bodies.
From the committees of this cpuncil, appointed for especial
branches of the law, arose the modern courts of King's Bench,
Exchequer, and Common Pleas.
Henry's reign was not entirely given up to administrative
reform. The king was as active among his generals as he
was among his clerks and justices. He was engaged in
three futile wars with the Welsh, who had been only partial-
ly subdued. After Becket's murder he went to Ireland,
which now makes its first important entry upon the stage of
English history. The island had been the scene of the
utmost disorder for several centuries. Once the abode of
learning and piety, it had fallen into a pit of ignorance and
superstition. One Dermod, a fugitive king of Leinster,
Rise of the Barons. 101
came to Henry and swore fealty to him in return for English
aid in regaining his throne. About 1169 Richard of Clare,
an English noble of ruined fortune, led an irregular expedi-
tion to Ireland and conquered the south-eastern districts. To
him went Henry himself, in 1171, perhaps to avoid the papal
legates who came to curse him for the archbishop's murder.
The next year he returned in time to meet the new legates, who
brought absolution. Ireland, though now nominally an
English fief, remained unconquered, save where Richard of
Clare, called " Strongbow," lorded it over the wretched Irish.
Henry managed the affairs of his kingdom better than
those of his own household. His wife Eleanor, a woman of
distinguishes 1 ability, hated him for his infidelity. His sons,
Henry, Geoffrey, Richard, and John, were the heaviness of
their father. The principle of heredity was not yet admit-
ted, and the king was anxious about the succession. To
secure the crown to his eldest son, Prince Henry, he had his
barons swear allegiance to him, and in 1170 had him formally
crowned. From this time " the Young King " was a source of
continual strife. He claimed a share in the government, and
demanded that a part of the inheritance, either Normandy or
England, should be given to him forthwith. The king had
already made his will, but refused to be his own executor.
At his death Henry was to have Normandy and England
and An j ou ; Richard's share was his mother's dowry, Aqui-
taine and Poitou, and Geoffrey should be duke of Brittany.
John, the youngest son, was omitted in the distribution,
and men — perhaps his brothers began it — dubbed him John
Lackland. Little John was the king's favorite, and he
tried to save a portion for him by persuading the elder
brothers to grant him certain castles and manors of their
own. The surly Henry rudely objected, and leagued with
King William of Scotland and a number of French and En-
glish barons to wrest the sovereignty from his father. But
that. father, once aroused, was irresistible; he scattered the
162 An Outline History of England.
French armies like a whirlwind, capturing the rebels. Mean-
while his lieutenants in England had found once more that
the king's strength lay in the confidence of the English com-
mons. The nobles were in revolt, but the royal army de-
feated the Earls (1173) and captured William the Lion, King
of the Scots. This sharp work was done while Henry was
absent. The capture of William was announced almost im-
mediately after the king had landed in Kent and made a
humble pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canter-
bury. Little blood was shed in punishment for this rebellion;
but more castles had to come down and more baronial power
had to be centered in the king. The king of Scots was not
liberated until (1175) he swore on bended knee to hold his
realm as a fief of the English crown.
For the rest of bis life Henry lived chiefly on the Conti-
nent. His possessions there were richer and more populous
than in England ; and there, too, he might watch the course
of his rival, the king of France, and keep an eye on his un-
filial sons. England was ruled meanwhile by the king's jus-
ticiar, Ranulf Glanville, one of the lawyers whose influence
is apparent in the wise constitutional changes of the reign.
In vain the king besought his sons to join hands for their
common safety. The Young King Henry, who was eventu-
ally to reign, urged the brothers to swear fealty to him
now. Richard reluctantly obeyed, but a bloody quarrel
rather than an alliance followed the act. The old king and
Richard took arms to oppose the attacks of Geoffrey and the
Young King. The latter's death (1183) ended his career of
mischief. Three years later Geoffrey died also — his widow,
Constance, soon after bearing him a son, Arthur of Brittany,
to face a short and sorrowful existence. Richard and John
Lackland survived. The experiment with one " young king "
convinced Henry of the imprudence of crowning Richard.
But this prince made close alliance with Philip, King of
France, and together they attacked the king, now broken in
Rise of the Barons. 103
spirit by disappointment and the rebellion of his heartless
sons. In July, 1188, he left England for the last time. A
truce was made, but it endured for a few months only. At
its close Philip invaded Anjou (1189), and Henry, without
resistance, gave up Le Mans, the town and castle of his birth.
The city of Tours fell on the third day of July, and the
sick and despairing monarch surrendered to Philip and
acknowledged Richard's claim to the crown of England.
The list of conspirators was placed in his hands, that he
might forgive them. At its head was John, the child of
his heart, and when he saw that name he turned his face to
the wall, lamenting : " No more, no more ! Let all things
go their way ! " Two days later he died at Chinon. The
garrulous courtiers said that when Prince Richard passed the
royal bier blood flowed from the nostrils of the dead king,
showing that Richard's conduct had broken the heart
within.
Richard Coeur de Lion (Lion-heart) was born in En-
gland, but until the Young King's death had little hope of
reigning there. His father early gave him his mother's prov-
inces, Aquitaine and Poitou, and there the prince practiced
the arts of chivalry, with occasionally a fiercer tilt at the king
of Spain, or some fellow-vassal of France. Personal bravery
was his commanding virtue. He was a burly, red-faced man,
fond of rich armor and brilliant trappings. England never
knew him well, and some doubt his ability to speak or write a
single sentence in English ; but the fame of his exploits filled
all Christendom, and long after his death Richard of En-
gland was a name to terrify the Turks. The romance of his
life has caught the fancy of the world, and the extravagance
and licentiousness which marred his habits are forgotten.
Queen Eleanor held England for her son until he came
from France. No united power disputed his title to the
throne of his father, and the realm was in such excellent
order that he was able to fling himself immediately into
104 An Outline History of England.
preparations for the enterprise which lay so near his heart.
For Richard was on fire with crusading fervor. The em-
peror of Germany and the king of Sicily were already off for
the East, and both Richard and Philip of France had taken the
cross and were eager to join them in Palestine.
Money was the king's pressing need, and he obtained it
by selling privileges. Scotland bought back the independ-
ence that its king had forfeited to Henry II., bishops paid
roundly for their titles to the lands of the bishoprics, earls
for their earldoms, barons for their manors. The offices of
justice and sheriff were made to yield their quota, also, to
the enormous crusading fund. Before quitting the island he
sought to insure peace and good government. To John, his
brother, he gave six English counties, so that he lacked land
no more, but he gave him no voice in the government. The
administration was left to the chancellor, William Long-
champ, and to the bishop of Durham, whom he made justi-
ciar, and who, as legate, wielded the anthority of the pope.
Fearing trouble, he bound John and his half-brother Geof-
frey (not to be confounded with that brother Geoffrey, the
father of little Arthur, the pitiful prince) to remain outside
the kingdom for three years.
Philip and Richard set out for the Holy Land in 1 1 90. They
were delayed all winter in Italy, where their jealousies led to
the brink of open war. In June, 1191, they reached Acre, where
a Christian army had held a force of Saracens beleaguered
for several years. The English king performed astounding
feats of valor in the remaining days of the siege, which soon
ended in the surrender of the city. Philip got his fill of cru-
sading, and sailed for France. Richard pushed on toward
Jerusalem, then in possession of Saladin, the most renowned
and chivalrous of Mohammedan sultans. Discord between
the English and French thwarted concerted action, and
Richard in disgust signed a truce for three years, three
months, and three days with the infidels, and turned his face
Rise of the Barons. 105
toward Europe, where he had reason to believe his presence
needful. John's term of absence was expiring, and Philip,
now his enemy, was back in France. In his haste to reach
England Richard was shipwrecked in the Adriatic and capt-
ured by the duke of Austria, who placed him in the custody
of Philip's friend, the German emperor, Henry VI. There
he remained in an unknown prison for thirteen months, and
a pretty story tells how Blondel, his minstrel, wandered
through Europe, singing the king's favorite air under many
a castle window, until Richard's own voice took up the strain
and finished it.
Richard was indeed needed at home. William Longchamp
had quarreled with the bishop of Durham and assumed the full
control of the state. Ability and loyalty William doubtless
had, but his pride and arrogance set barons and Englishmen
alike against him. The better to manage the former, he took
from them their castles, even attacking the strongholds of
Prince John, who returned to England at the expiration of
his three-years' bond. Geoffrey, the half-brother, also came
to England and leagued with John. The barons and bishops
succeeded in driving Longchamp into exile, John being recog-
nized as Richard's regent, and Walter of Coutances proving
his own credentials as royal justiciar and papal legate in place
of the banished prelate. John and Philip now intrigued to
prevent the return of Richard, and great was their joy at
the news of his capture in February, 1193.
The English people were exceedingly proud of their ab-
sent king, foreigner though he was, and they left no stone
unturned in their efforts for his release. The emperor placed
an enormous ransom upon him, and Philip and John put
every obstacle in the way of raising it. But Queen Eleanor,
the new justiciar, and Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, put themselves at the head of the enthusiastic nation,
and the sum was made up. The rich gave liberally, and the
common people gave one fourth of their movable goods to
106 An Outline History of England.
swell the fund. In a twelvemonth the money was paid over.
The emperor kept his word, and Richard was set free. King
Philip's messenger posted to John with the words, "Beware!
the devil is loose." King Richard arrived in England in
March, 1194, just in time to witness John's surrender to
Archbishop Hubert and to pardon his brother and Geoffrey.
He spent but sixty days in the island in this the last visit
of his life, and he applied the time to the restoration of order
and the levying of a tax to defray the expense of the war
which he was about to carry on with France. On the 12th
of May he sailed for the Continent, leaving Hubert Walter
to govern the realm and raise funds to meet the heavy
draughts of the campaign. The archbishop was a well-
trained politician, a prudent ruler, and a statesman. But not
even he could continue uninterruptedly to exact money from
the English to support an unpopular foreign war. In 1198 a
great council of notables — the usual bishops and barons — met
his request for an extraordinary contribution with flat refusal,
and he was glad to lay down his dignities in favor of a
sterner man, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter.
The money wrenched from Englishmen went partly for
war, partly for fortresses, and partly to buy alliances with
the enemies of France. Had Richard been able to unite his
French dominions with his English heritage for a common
and hearty attack upon Philip of France he might have won,
but his continental duchies and counties cared far less for
him than did his English subjects, who in turn felt no interest
in the war. To protect Rouen, his Norman capital, he built
that splendid Chateau Gaillard (the " saucy castle "), which
Philip swore to take " were the walls iron," and Cceur de
Lion vowed to defend " were its bulwarks built of butter."
To crush the French monarch he and his stanch friend Long-
champ intrigued with the Powers of western Europe. When
the plot was nearly ready for execution death foiled it. In a
private feud with the count of Limoges, over a treasure-trove
Rise of the Barons. 107
claimed by the count's master, the king received his mortal
hurt from an arrow shot from the castle wall (119W. So
died Richard I. of England, forgiving, in his kingly fashion,
the bowman whose shaft had struck him down.
In the list of English kings since the Conquest there are many
repetitions: four Williams, eight Henrys, six Edwards, four
Georges, and two each named James and Charles, but John
has had no namesake; no English queen has dared to christen
a son by that hated name. Of John Lackland, the prince,
the reader knows something — how his rebellion broke the
heart of a kind father, and his treachery stole the kingdom
from a brother in distress. The history of his reign has
blacker stains, for this talented and fascinating monarch was
foul in his life, and false to all men and women with whom
he had to do. The period of his sovereignty, however, is
. worthy of the closest study on three points — the permanent
separation of England and Normandy, the quarrel between
king and pope, and the signing of the Great Charter.
King Richard died childless. By the Norman rules of in-
heritance his next of kin was not his younger brother John,
but Prince Arthur of Brittany, son of his elder brother
Geoffrey, whose death has already been noted. Yet John
claimed the crown of England, as the ablest and most worthy
male of the house of Plantagenet, and Hubert Walter
managed his election at London and coronation. From his
father, Geoffrey, young Arthur inherited Anjou and other
provinces which Henry II. had held as a vassal of the king
of France, and the prince after receiving their allegiance lived
at King Philip's court. John claimed these provinces for
himself, and, with the advice and able assistance of his queen-
mother Eleanor, used force to compel their submission; Philip
left Arthur to shift for himself, and the boy, now fifteen years
of age, fell into John's hands. A mystery shrouds Arthur's
death, but his uncle's cruelty makes plausible the story that
he was murdered at Rouen, either by John or by his royal
108 An Outline History of England.
command. Philip, at least, credited the report and ordered
John, as his vassal, to appear before the French barons and
clear himself of the accusation. The sentence of the court
was forfeiture. John was declared to have forfeited all his
French fiefs. Philip's army executed the decree forthwith.
The " saucy castle " was humbled. Normandy passively ac-
cepted the French rule, and the entire English realm on the
Continent, save a small district in the south of France, was
seized by the French. John returned to England, now his
sole possession. Soon after his arrival Archbishop Hubert,
his faithful counselor, died (1205).
The death of the archbishop of Canterbury inaugurated
King John's disastrous conflict with the Church. There were
several candidates for the primacy. The Canterbury monks
had one, John named another, and the bishops of the province
nominated a third. The parties took their dispute to
Rome, where Innocent III., one of the greatest of the popes,
threw out all three, and appointed an English scholar
and cardinal, Stephen Langton (1207). The enraged king
swore that the pope's man should never set foot in the king-
dom. For six years he kept his defiant word in the face of
the most awful power in Christendom. Innocent launched
his three thunderbolts successively against him. First an
interdict was placed upon the kingdom. All public religious
services were forbidden. Churches were closed and all
Church ceremonies save baptism ceased. The king retaliated
by plundering the prelates who obeyed the pope, and by
persecuting the Italian priests. Innocent then declared the
king excommunicate, and his people were ordered to have
no dealings with him. Still John was obdurate. Innocent's
final act was the Bull of Deposition. The king was now a
spiritual outlaw, and his vassals were released from their
allegiance. To Philip of France the pope intrusted the
execution of the decree, and that monarch eagerly prepared
to invade England. John would have resisted even then had
Rise of the Barons. 109
he not discovered that his English barons were deserting
him. By a sudden change of front he yielded to Rome. On
May 15, 1213, King John disgracefully surrendered his king-
dom to the pope's commissioner, Pandulf, receiving it again as
tributary vassal of Innocent III. Before the year's end
he had thwarted Philip's plan of invasion, but his attempts to
regain any portion of his father's lands in France were ended
by the defeat of his allies at Bouvines (1214). King John
had only two years to live, but one of them — 1215 — marks
an era in the history of the world's struggle for freedom, for
in that year the great charter of English liberty was drawn
up and signed.
At his coronation, and twice or thrice thereafter when
hard pressed, the king had sworn to rule justly, after the
laws of the best of his predecessors, but his promises were
"false as dicers' oaths." They were made to be broken, and
the oppressed barons secretly concerted measures for holding
him to their performance. Archbishop Langton, of honored
memory, added the influence of the Church to the strength
of the nobility, and the common people, finding their natural
leaders united and their sovereign faithless, turned against
the king. Langton found among the rolls a copy of the
charter of rights which Henry I. had granted. This for-
gotten document he read to the barons assembled at St.
Paul's Church in London, in October, 1213, proposing it
as a basis for a new charter which should limit the power of
the king and protect the rights of the people.
After his discomfiture in France John turned and
twisted to free himself from the coil of difficulties gathering
about him. To dissolve the union of the nobility, to win over
the clergy, to secure the interference of the pope, taxed every
device of the king's remarkably fertile brain ; but Stephen
and the men who believed the righteousness of their cause
and knew John's worthlessness would not be put off or gain-
said. They gathered an army and marched into London
110 An Outline History of England.
(May, 1215). With not a single man of weight to stand by
him, the king yielded at last. On the island of Runnymede,
in Thames, between Staines and Windsor, he met the barons
and signed with them the treaty which Ave reverence as
Magna Charta, the Great Charter of England. This memo-
rable event took place on the 15th of June, in the year 1215.
The Great Charter was a plain and clear statement of the
several rights and privileges which former kings had granted
to the Church, nobility, towns, and common people of En-
gland. It contained little or nothing that was new, but it
expressed in definite shape the accepted principles of good
government and provided means for applying them. It de-
clared, "No freeman shall be seized, or imprisoned, or dis-
possessed, or outlawed, or in any way brought to ruin, save
by the legal judgment of his equals or by the law of the
land." "To no man will we sell, or deny or delay, right
or justice." No tax could be levied save by the authority
of the great council — this accords with that maxim of lib-
erty, " No taxation without representation." All privileges
granted by the king to his tenants-in-chief were to be granted
in like manner by these barons to their under- tenantry.
Trade was relieved from excessive duties, the rights which
the city and town corporations had acquired were to be re-
spected. These and many other provisions make up Magna
Charta. The novel feature of the paj)er was the appointment
of a committee of twenty-five barons to insure its execu-
tion.
But John did not dream of executing it. He was the
pope's man now, and the weapons which had been fleshed
upon him were at his disposal against his enemies. At his
suit the pope annulled the charter and absolved the king
from his share in its enactment. The barons rebelled, and
the pope struck at them blow after blow. Excommunica-
tion was followed by interdict, and the king hired an army
of continental ruffians to chastise them until they cried for
Rise of the Barons. Ill
mercy. Pandulf declared Langton suspended from his epis-
copal authority. The barons raised such forces as they could
muster, and begged Louis, son of Philip of France, to rid
their island of its monstrous monarch. Louis landed in May,
1216, with an army. John was in the north fighting the king
of Scots. After a victory he marched southward to meet
the new foe, but in crossing the sands of the Wash in Lin-
colnshire a hia;h tide swallowed his treasure and left him
weakened in the presence of his enemies. Death overtook
him before the dauphin's army. Fever — some whisper
poison — ended his wretched life at Newark, October 19,
1216.
112 An Outline History of England.
CHAPTER VII.
THE PLANTAGENET KINGS. 1216 A. D.-1327 A. D.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III. TO THE DEATH OF EDWARD II.
William the Conqueror and his son, the Red King, were
pure despots; they believed that absolute power in the hands
of a monarch was the best form of government. To estab-
lish this system they broke through the feudal rules of
France and made all England, noble and commoner, swear
allegiance to the sovereign. The king of France ruled his
barons — when he could ; they in turn governed the people.
These two kingdoms developed very differently. Centrali-
zation in England ended in a constitution, by which the
royal power was hemmed in on every side, and the common
people acquired the practical direction of the government.
In France a succession of powerful kings beat down the
power of the barons and consolidated authority around the
throne, until in the eighteenth century — when England was
ruled by an elective Parliament — Louis XIV. could truth-
fully say of France, " The State ? I am the State." The
preceding chapter outlined the progress of liberty in En-
gland. The administration and judicial system which Henry
I. had devised for the sake of order, and which Henry II.
had broadened and strengthened for similar reasons, had
proved so acceptable that its neglect by John threw the
kingdom into revolt — a rebellion so serious that at the death
of the king half his barons were in arms against him and
had leagued with Louis, son of Philip of France, to drag
him from his throne. Led by Stephen Langton, the barons
and bishops had forced the king to sign the Great Charter,
The Plantagenet Kings. 113
but before his death, in 1216, he had renounced his assent to
it and had secured a decree from the pope annulling the
document altogether.
Affairs were in this woeful case when the death of John
left his nine-year-old son, Henry of Winchester, to face the
exasperated nobles and the ambitious dauphin. Probably
had the king lived he would have lost the crown, but his
death removed the most serious grievance of the rebels.
Patriotism detached some from the French prince; the pros-
pect of more independence during the boy king's minority
doubtless caused more to fall away. The barons were fight-
ing to compel the king to observe his pledge of good govern-
ment; opportunity now offered for the patriots and nobles to
rally round an infant, and in his name to set up the system
which his false father had spurned.
A small but able band of John's friends, chief among them
William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke; Peter des Roches,
Bishop of Winchester, and the papal legate, espoused Henry's
cause and had the little fellow crowned king at Gloucester.
In his name they re-issued Magna Charta, omitting tempora-
rily several sections. William Marshall, a tried and faithful
friend of John, assumed the regency as " governor of the
king and kingdom." In 1217 he beat the French and En-
glish at Lincoln, and before the year's end he had cleared
Louis out of the island. Henry was accepted as king by the
remnant of the rebels, and in his name the regent again re-
issued the charter, from which the pope had withdrawn his
condemnation. In 1219 Earl William died, having saved the
country from Fiance and civil war. Peter des Roches, Pan-
clulf the legate, and the justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, together
conducted the regency, and Henry was crowned again at
Westminster by Archbishop Langton, whose share in the
events at Runnymede was now forgiven and even applauded.
Hubert was the great man of the triumvirate who exercised
the king's power. Bishop Peter represented one dangerous
114 An Outline History of England.
influence and Pandulf another. During John's reign the
many royal castles and some of the chief places in Church
and State had been given to Frenchmen like Peter des
Roches. Against these Hubert proceeded with severity, and
succeeded in reclaiming the property and authority of the
king and driving out the foreigners. Moreover, the legate
Pandulf represented the pope of Rome, to whom John had
granted the kingdom. At the return of Langton the legate
was superseded, and England's Church was left under the
control of the archbishop of Canterbury. These were genu-
ine triumphs for Hubert. In 1225, when the justiciar desired a
grant of money to meet the expenses of a new war with
Louis, now king of France, King Henry again, " by his
spontaneous will," solemnly promised to respect the charter
which his father had signed perforcedly.
With how little sincerity Henry re-issued the charter in
1225 maybe learned from his course after 1227, when he be-
came of age and began to exhibit himself in all his unfitness
for kingship. He ruled in his own name forty-five years,
and lost no opportunity to rid himself of all constitutional
trammels, and to show his disregard of Englishmen and his
faithfulness to the pope. Hubert de Burgh was j usticiar until
1232, shielding the people from oppression and incurring
the hatred of the king. Henry, guided by Peter des Roches,
filled the high places in the administration with foreigners —
Frenchmen — but this could no longer be done with impunity.
The days were past when England was the unresisting prey of
foreigners, and the descendants of the Conqueror's Normans
looked -upon Henry's French officers as intruders. Bishop
Peter secured the deposition of Hubert de Burgh, and when
Richard Marshall, son of the regent William, succeeded him
as the head of the English party the wily Peter had him ac-
cused of treason and destroyed. Though its leaders were
cut down, the rank and file of the opposition stood firm. In
J 235 Peter des Roches had to yield and leave the court,
The Plantagenet Kings. 115
By the dismissal of both Hubert and Peter the king was
gainer. He filled their places with insignificant men — mere
clerks — who transacted the duties of chancellor, justiciar,
and treasurer, but who had no power and exerted no influ-
ence. The authority of these great offices the king reserved
to himself. With stubborn disregard of the demands of his
subjects, he laid upon them repeated taxes to support his
petty wars with Scotland, Wales, and France, and to lavish
upon the gorgeous tourneys and feasts with which he cele-
brated the marriages of his family. To these expenses were
added the great sums which he pledged to the pope.
Before each fresh imposition the bishops and barons debated
it in a great council — now first called Parliament. So
far as they dared they resisted. The king generally gained
their consent by promising to redress their wrongs. They
we,re long in learning how vain were his pledges. They
lacked a leader bold enough and patriotic enough to compel
the king to keep his word at all hazards. Edmund of Abing-
don and Robert of Lincoln among the bishops, Earl Ranulf
of Chester and John's second son Richard, Duke of Cornwall
and " King of the Romans," among the barons, were men of
genuine nobility and pure patriotism, but they were not
fitted to fight to the death for a principle as did Simon of
Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who at last found the will and
courage to grapple with the king.
There are two Simons of Montfort in history. The elder
Simon belongs to France, for whose king he led a cruel cru-
sade against the Albigenses, poor peasants condemned by the
pope for heresy. The youngest of his four sons became
the English hero. He was a Frenchman who had become
earl of English Chester, and had married Henry's sister
Eleanor. Strangely enough, we find Earl Simon ranging with
the English barons in their resistance to his brother-in-law
King Henry. We find him in the front rank, too, his name
not a w r hit less respected than that of the king's own brother.
116 An Outline History of England.
Richard of Cornwall (1244). Whatever were Henry's feel-
ings toward his sister's husband, he sent Earl Simon to gov-
ern the Gascons (1248), who still remained his subjects in
France ; but this period was one of constant bickerings.
Gascon y, filled with the hot-heads of the south, complained
of de Montfort's vigorous measures, while Simon and the
king disputed over revenues and debts. In 1253 the earl
returned to become the champion of the English.
The royal tyranny grew worse yearly. In 1257 the king
informed the Parliament that his second son, Edmund, was
to be king of Sicily, and that he would consequently want a
large sum of money. The barons cut the appropriation down
to one third of the sum and granted it. In 1258 the king
repeated his request. He had pledged his realm to the pope
for a certain sum; if the barons would grant it he would
govern henceforth in accordance with their wishes. The
" Provisions of Oxford," drawn up in June of that year, ex-
pressed the desires of the barons. They went beyond
Magna Charta. The foreigners were to be sent out of the
kingdom; the great offices, whose functions the king had
monopolized, were to be re-established; the financial and ju-
dicial arrangements of Henry II. were to be restored.
Twenty- four men, twelve by royal appointment, twelve
chosen by the earls and barons, were to carry out the reforms.
A select council of fifteen was to meet thrice a year to
advise the king. Two other commissions represented the
barons and the Church. To all these acts Henry plighted
his sacred word.
England had now limited its monarchy and undertaken
to establish a constitutional government. But the king, on
whom much depended, was as false as the traitor John, and
the barons and earls were jealous and discordant. The Pro-
visions had been in force two years, when Henry, seeing the
disunion of his enemies, renounced his oath and received
papal absolution. The next year (1262) he turned about
*The Plantagenet Kings. ilf
and took the oath a second time. Prince Edward, the
heir to the throne, was by this time old enough to be con-
cerned in the welfare of his inheritance, and he feared lest
Simon de Montfort, the directing spirit of the king's council,
should usurp the title, as he had bade fair to usurp the powers,
of the sovereign. In 1263 there was actual civil war, but in
December the whole matter of dispute was referred to Louis
IX. (Saint Louis), King of France. His award, the " Mise
of Amiens," given in June, 1264, was for Henry. The Ox-
ford agreement was annulled, the king's supremacy restored,
and both parties exhorted to peace and good-will.
Simon de Montfort refused to accept the decision, and con-
tinued the war against King Henry, his son Edward, and
his brother Richard. After two months of profitless castle-
taking Earl Simon defeated the king's army at Lewes, and
captured its three royal leaders (1264). A new Parliament,
in which four knights from each shire sat with the barons and
bishops, formed a new constitution, limiting the royal pre-
rogatives still more than the Provisions. Three counsel-
ors, of whom Earl Simon was one, were the actual rulers.
By their advice the body known in history as " Simon de Mont-
fort's Parliament " was summoned to meet in January, 1265.
It is noteworthy, because here, for the first time in England,
the towns were represented by members who sat along- side
the earls, barons, and bishops who represented the feudal
organization of the realm. It marked a significant step in
the direction of government by the people.
Earl Simon's triumph vanished in a moment. A quarrel
with his colleague, the earl of Gloucester, re-opened the civil
war. Prince Edward escaped and joined Simon's enemies.
On August 4, 1265, a battle was fought at Evesham. Simon
fell, and his party lingered, only to be beaten piecemeal.
In 1267 the war was over. The king, though victorious,
dared not revive the tyrannies of his early reign, but he sum-
moned no commons to his Parliament and allowed no com-
118 An Outline History of England.
mittee of barons to rule his actions. Prince Edward went to
the Holy Land on a crusade (1270), and in his absence (1272)
his father died, after the longest and one of the most wretched
of English reigns.
Henry III.'s reign covers more than half of the thirteenth
century, one of the most brilliant epochs in the history of
the world. A revival of religion in the Christian Church
sent forth two orders of preaching friars. The Dominicans,
or Black Friars, and the Franciscans, or Grey Friars, were
men who took the vow of poverty and consecrated them-
selves to preaching the Gospel to the common people. They
had at first no churches, and dwelt in no monasteries, but
preached in the streets, and at the road-side crosses, living
on the scanty alms of their hearers. These begging preach-
ers did much to purify the life of the towns-people, and the
more learned of their order were among the noted lecturers
in the new universities. For it was during Henry's reign that
Oxford began to be known in England, Scotland, Wales, and
western Europe as a center of the world's learning. A few
students, assembled in the previous century to listen to lect-
ures on divinity and Roman law, formed the nucleus of this
university, whither flocked young men from every nation, and
where Roger Bacon (1214-1292), "the first name in the roll
of modern science," taught and wrote.
After two centuries of French Williams and Henrys the
Saxon name of Edward re-appears in the list of English
kings, and — without regard to the West Saxon Edwards, the
" Martyr " and the " Confessor " — this son of Henry III. is
known as Edward the First, or, in the jovial language of the
camps through which he strode, "Edward Longshanks."
Seldom was prince better prepared for his duties. Through-
out his boyhood he witnessed the efforts of the barons to
compel his father to respect the Charter; in his younger
manhood he learned patriotism and military science from his
faithful and brilliant uncle, Simon de Montfort, whose party
The Plantagenet Kings. il£
he favored until he had reason to fear their usurpation of the
throne. Commanding with the king at Lewes, he had driven
one division of the enemy so far in his impetuous charge that
the other divisions had time to defeat his father before his
return. His maneuvers and bravery ended the war at Eves-
ham, and his wisdom then took him on a crusade (the
seventh) to Palestine, to allow the hot tempers of the king-
dom time to cool before his return. At the news of his
father's death (1272) Edward, then thirty-three years of
age, vigorous in body and mind, returned to England. His
career in the East had yielded no permanent success. In
Italy he paid his respects to the pope, and in France he
knelt in homage to King Philip III., as overlord of Gascony.
It was 1274 when he set foot in England, and the crown of
his Plantagenet fathers was placed upon his head.
JMward I. reigned gloriously for thirty-five years, extend-
ing the boundaries of England, exerting her influence over
Wales and Scotland, and giving to the nation itself a pride
and patriotism it never had known before.
The Welsh war was already forward when Edward returned
from Palestine. Wales was peopled by Celts of the Cymric
branch, the remnant of the race which Caesar had found in
southern Britain, and which the Anglo-Saxon invasion had
driven into the west country. Strathclyde, Cornwall, and
the lesser Celtic states had come completely under the
earlier Saxon and the later Norman rule, but no English king
had yet been king of Wales. The people were Christians
of the old British type; they spoke the old Celtic language,
and the songs of their bards kindled and fed a fiercer flame
of patriotism than any that burned in an English breast.
They were threatening neighbors for the West-of-England
shires, which the Norman kings had sought to protect by
granting to their border earls extraordinary powers. Thus
the families of Mortimer, Bohun, Marshall, and Clare rose to
dangerous eminence, and sometimes actually leagued with
i20 An Outline Hjstory of England.
the Welsh princes to make war upon each other, or upon the
king. During Henry's troublous years the Welshmen had
steered so cleverly that at its close their Prince Llewelyn
refused to pay homage to King Edward. In 12 77 he was
forced to admit the king's feudal supremacy, and peace was
made, the prince marrying Earl Simon's daughter. But the
treaty was soon broken. In 1282 Llewelyn and his brother
David broke faith and invaded the western marches. Ed-
ward made careful preparations for a campaign against them.
The half-measures of the past fifty years had failed, and he
now determined to make thorough work of the conquest.
His great army crossed the border, defeated the prince and
his brother, and received the submission of the Celtic chief-
tains. It was long believed that by his orders the bards
who had inspired the Welsh to resistance were ruthlessly
massacred, but the story is not worthy of credit. In 1284
the " Statute of Wales " proclaimed the annexation of the
principality to England, and from that time the two countries
began to grow together, though the union was not complete
until a much later day.
Soon after the pacification of the west confusion arose in
the north. The death of the Scottish sovereign left that
throne vacant, with thirteen claimants wrangling for the
seat. Over Scotland the English kings since William I. had
claimed authority, but had no real power. The disputed
title was, however, now left to Edward to decide. John Bal-
liol and Robert Bruce were the leading candidates before the
Scottish council which King Edward held in Norliam castle in
1291, and to the former, with the general assent of the Scots,
the king awarded the crown. Balliol accepted the kingdom
as a fief of England, and did homage for it in true feudal
fashion. Yet both the Scots and their king fretted under this
English lordship. They resisted Edward's decree that appeals
from Scottish law courts should be settled in his own council,
and they refused to obey his summons to fight in the
The Plantagenet Kings. 121
English wars. In fact, Balliol made a secret treaty with
Philip IV. of France.
It was to invade France that Edward had ordered the
Scottish barons to join his forces. The sailors of the English
Cinque Ports (the channel towns Dover, Sandwich, Hastings,
Hythe, and Romney) had quarreled with the Norman sea-
men in the channel, and King Philip, as Edward's feudal lord,
called him to account for his vassals' misdemeanors. Edward
went not, but sent his brother, offending thus His Majesty of
France, who at once laid hands upon Guienne, one of the
fragments of English territory on the Continent. There
would have been immediate war had not the internal af-
fairs of England prevented. The defection of the Scots was
the king's first care. He had learned of their alliance with
France — the beginning of a connection which lasted until the
eighteenth century — and demanded possession of their bor-
der castles as a pledge of good faith. Balliol returned de-
fiance. Edward's army sacked the border city of Berwick,
captured Edinburgh, Stirling, and Perth, and received the
surrender of the Scots' king. John Warrenne, Earl of Sur-
rey, was left to pacify and organize the English rule in Scot-
land. The conqueror took back with him to Westminster a
sacred stone supposed to be the hard pillow on which the
patriarch Jacob dreamed of the heaven-reaching ladder.
Upon this stone in the abbey of Scone each sovereign of
Scotland had been crowned. Edward had it placed in
the English coronation chair which is still in use. When
James VI. of Scotland became James I. of England, the Scots
saw in the event a new proof of the sanctity of this rock.
Earl Warrenne was rudely stopped in his work of organi-
zation by William. Wallace, an outlawed Scottish knight.
The baronage and the clergy obeyed Edward's lieutenant,
who accordingly thought he had the country well in hand.
But Wallace called upon the common people to regain the
freedom which the aristocracy had surrendered. Such a tide
6
122 An Outline Histotcy of England.
of national feeling had not been seen before in Scotland, and
its first waves were resistless. In the battle of Stirling (Sep-
tember, 1297) the earl of Surrey was put to rout, and he stayed
not until he was on the safe south side of the border. Wallace
was now hailed as "guardian of the realm," but Edward has-
tened against him with an overwhelming force. Two abler
generals had not met before on British soil than Edward and
the outlaw Wallace. The superior strength of the English
archers carried the day at Falkirk, in July, 1298. But not
until 1304 did Edward consider the conquest of Scotland
completed. Wallace was executed as a traitor, and the gov-
ernment of his country was intrusted to a council of Scottish
nobles. In the year before Edward's death (1307) the spirit
of Scottish nationality flamed forth again, and a war was be-
gun which won the independence of that kingdom.
The stirring events of the west and north have thus far
obscured the political and legal activities of Edward's reign
— though the latter are even more important. In previous
reigns we have noticed the germs of parliamentary govern-
ment and of judicial institutions; in this we trace the devel-
opment of both these principles. The king's justices were now
divided, for judicial purposes, into three courts: Exchequer,
for trying revenue cases; King's Bench, where criminal suits
are heard; and Common Pleas, the court of private litiga-
tion. A separate staff of judges was assigned to each divis-
ion. As a source of revenue the Parliament of 1275 granted
to the king an export duty upon wool — the first customs duty
imposed on English goods. The Welsh and Scottish cam-
paigns exhausted the royal coffers and frequent Parliaments
were called to devise new means of raising money. At first
the innovations of Simon de Montfort were disregarded, and
only the barons and clergy were represented in these gather-
ings. But the government was hard pressed for money which
the towns-people and county-farmers could supply if they
would, and so the reform came about. In 1 295 King Edward
The Plantagexet Kings. 123
summoned the first perfect Parliament — " the clergy repre-
sented by their bishops, deans, etc. ; the barons summoned
severally in person by the king's special writ; and the com-
mons summoned by writs addressed to the sheriffs, directing
them to send up two elected knights from each shire, two
elected citizens from each city, and two elected burghers from
each borough." The right of the barons to be summoned to
Parliament became hereditary, and these members, with the
bishops, made up the House of Lords. The other members,
knights and commons, formed the House of Commons,
though in Edward's time, and long after, this division of Par-
liament into two houses was unknown.
It is not to be supposed that Edward granted these free
institutions to his people from any philanthropic motives-
Order and system were, in his mind, essential to good govern-
ment, but it was no less essential that the king should be the
source of all order and the center-point of the system. His
obstinate persistence in subjecting the Church to his taxation
involved him in a quarrel with Winchelsey, Archbishop of
Canterbury, which was prolonged through several years, and
which ended in 1297 by a compromise. In that year the king
needed money and men for the invasion of Flanders. The bar-
ons, discontented with the amount of power the king had cen-
tered in himself, refused to follow him, and the clergy, backed
by the pope and led by the archbishop, refused to be taxed.
As the price of the submission of both orders, Winchelsey ob-
tained a confirmation of the charters, and the promulgation of
new decrees establishing the right of the people to determine
all questions of taxation. This confirmation of the charters
was repeated again and again, and twice a year the charters
were to be read aloud in the cathedral churches, to remind
the people of their political rights and obligations.
The closing months of Edward's life are characteristic of
the whole. He was now nearly seventy years of age, and his
magnificent physique had been shattered by the mental and
124 An Outline History of England.
physical strain of a busy life in camp and council hall. The
government which he had inaugurated in Scotland had gone
wrong. Robert Bruce, a grandson of the Bruce who had
claimed the crown in 1290, headed a conspiracy to emancipate
the nation. By combining strength with stealth he overcame
the English interest, stabbing with his own hand John
Comyn, the late regent, and being crowned King of Scots at
Scone, in March, 1306. Around him gathered the elements
which had made Wallace's rising momentarily successful;
but his resources were small, and had Edward been young
and vigorous the end might have been otherwise. An En-
glish army beat the Bruce and drove him into seclusion in the
Highlands ; Edward himself hurried north to assume the
direction of affairs, but his infirmities bore him down, and
on July 7, 1307, he succumbed, dying at Burgh-on-Sands,
within sight of the Scottish border. Eleanor, his first queen,
whom he loved devotedly, had died seventeen years before,
her sole surviving son, Edward, being Prince of Wales and
heir to the crown of England.
England has not known an abler sovereign than the first
Edward. His reign was not destitute of great men, but in
history he towers above his earls and bishops as he over-
topped them in life. Strong and steadfast in every crisis,
living his motto, "Keep troth" [Pactum servo), he was a
genuine national leader, a real king. Men have called him
cruel, but his " massacre of the Welsh bards " is a falsehood,
his treatment of Wallace and the Scots was in his eyes just
judgment upon oath-breakers, and his expulsion of the Jews
from the kingdom (1290) was in answer to an undoubted
popular demand.
Edward II., of Carnarvon, was king of England for twenty
years (1307-1327). It was a gay and pleasure-loving gentle-
man of twenty-three who succeeded to the kingship which
his hard-headed father had given his life to strengthen. The
defect in the system was immediately apparent. The burden
The Plantagenet Kings. 125
of a centralized government, which the elder Edward had
carried easily upon his sinewy shoulders, sent the son stagger-
ing to his fall.
Young Edward's devotion to a Gascon courtier, Piers (or
Peter) Gaveston, was the first cause of his misfortunes. The
old king had warned his son that the nobles would be jealous
of Piers, and before his death he had banished the favorite,
and pledged the prince not to recall him without the consent
of Parliament. But his great father's admonition was lost
upon the flighty young king, who immediately called Gaves-
ton to England, made him earl of Cornwall, and, to the
disgust of the English nobility, left this earl of a day regent
of the kingdom while he went to France to claim the hand
of Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fair. King and queen
were crowned together (1308), the sovereign swearing " to
keep the laws and righteous customs which the community of
the realm shall have chosen, and to defend them and strengthen
them to the honor of God, to the utmost of my power."
The barons' opposition to Gaveston showed itself forth-
with. The Scottish war was allowed to drop out of sight,
and the king devoted himself to the protection of his
unworthy favorite. Thomas, Earl of Lancaster ; Henry de
Lacy, Earl of Lincoln ; and Guy Beauchamp, Earl of War-
wick — the proudest barons in England — led the attack. Two
months after the coronation Piers was in exile, but the shifty
king had him again at court the following spring. A revo-
lution followed. The Parliament of 1310 took the govern-
ment out of Edward's hands and gave it for one year to a
commission of twenty-one " Ordain ers." The "ordinances"
proposed by this body in 1311 provided for the banishment
of the foreign favorites, and the limitation of the king's
authority by the barons in Parliament. Edward accepted
these laws, but broke them at the first opportunity. The
exasperated earls again took the law into their own hands,
captured Gaveston, and the earls of Warwick and Lancaster
126 Ax Outline History of England.
had him beheaded in June, 1312. This left Thomas of
Lancaster the leading man in the kingdom. The king was
powerless.
Edward I. used his last breath in marching into Scotland
to chastise Robert Bruce. The accession of Edward II. was
Scotland's opportunity. The English commanders won iso-
lated successes, but no comprehensive plan of subjugation
was made or followed. The fugitive Bruce, encouraged, says
the tale, by the perseverance of a spider, spinning and re-
spinning its torn web, resumed his efforts. The English
garrisons, left unsupported, surrendered the Lowland castles,
until in 1314 Stirling, the only English stronghold left, was
itself at the point of yielding. Edward tried to relieve the
post, but his army had no confidence in his military ability,
and Bruce's Scotchmen beat the king's knights at Bannock-
burn, June 24, 1314. This signal victory gave Bruce the
absolute sovereignty of Scotland. The earl of Lancaster was
now almost supreme in England, but his use of his high
position made him powerful enemies. The weak king, crav-
ing support, adopted Hugh le Despenser, father and son,
granting them such wealth and honors as his restricted
means allowed. All the old jealousy of Gaveston was
aroused against the new recipients of royal favor. The
lords assembled in Parliament sentenced the two Despensers
to forfeiture and exile (1322). The king nursed his chagrin
for a few months and then broke forth. An insult offered to
his queen by Lady Badlesmere furnished a pretext for rais-
ing an army; and once at the head of troops Edward discov-
ered some of his father's energy. He caught at the chance
to rid himself of Lancaster's control. The royal army took
the earl in battle at Boroughbridge, and he was condemned
and executed as a traitor, though the English people gener-
ally honored him as a saint. The victorious king clung to
the Despensers, and annulled the ordinances which had been
forced on him in 1311. He even fought a campaign against
The Plaxtagexet Kings. 127
the Bruce which ended disastrously, and in 1323 a truce for
thirteen years brought peace to England and Scotland.
Lancaster's death left the national party without a leader
in England, and for a few months the Despensers amassed
wealth unchallenged. The thunder-cloud which was to blast
them gathered on the eastern shore of the Channel. The ac-
cession of a new king in France, Charles IV., made it neces-
sary for Edward to pay feudal homage for his small conti-
nental holdings. But his mentors dared not trust him out of
their hands, nor to accompany him, for England would rise
in their absence, and there was more than one whetted dag-
ger for them in the French court, swarming with English ex-
iles. In 1325 the queen, herself a French princess, went over
and persuaded her husband to send their son and heir, Prince
Edward, to her. Mother and son straightway turned against
the king. Roger Mortimer, an English lord who had escaped
Lancaster's doom, directed operations, and hired troops for
the invasion of England. They landed in September, 132G,
the queen proclaiming herself the liberator of the realm
from the king's false counselors. The Londoners joined her,
and the king, after a weak resistance, abandoned the struggle.
The Despensers, elder and younger, died on the gallows. A
Parliament at Westminster (January, 132V) declared the
king faithless and unworthy to rule, and the broken-spirited
monarch confessed that it was so. He resigned the crown in
favor of his thirteen-year-old son, Edward of Windsor, whose
mother, guided by Roger Mortimer, reigned until the death
of the king. The ruined monarch was confined in Berkeley
castle, where he was murdered September 21, 1327.
128 An Outline History of England.
CHAPTER VIII.
ENGLAND AND FRANCE. 1327 A. D. -1422 A. D.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD III. TO THE DEATH OF HENRY V.
The reign of Edward II. had come to a wretched end
(1327) — the Scots plundering the northern marches, the
French trespassing upon the English continental province,
the old king a prisoner, the new king a lad, and the regency
controlled by Queen Isabella and the outlawed Roger Morti-
mer. The regents had all power, but small wisdom or ability.
They made peace with Scotland (1328), signing away at
Northampton whatever feudal rights Edward III. might have
been entitled to in that kingdom. Scotland was free, and
Robert Bruce was its king.
This disgraceful treaty of Northampton aroused the En-
glish nobles against Mortimer, but he was too strongly in-
trenched in the government to be dislodged easily. His
destruction came when least expected. Edward was eighteen
years of age in 1330 — old enough to feel keenly the shame
of the situation. By a secret passage he made entrance, with
an armed band of his close friends, into Mortimer's presence
in Nottingham castle, and seized the offender, who, once be-
reft of authority, was quickly sentenced by the lords in Par-
liament, and hurried to a traitor's death at Tyburn. The
queen-mother passed the remainder of her life in retirement.
Edward III. assumed personal direction of the govern-
ment. The condition of Scotland was his earliest care. The
death of Robert Bruce left the throne to a child, and Edward
Balliol, gathering a band of English adventurers, had himself
crowned at Scone. His renewal of the allegiance to the king
England and France. 129
of England lost him his crown; the Scots would not have
him to reign over them. Edward of England fought man-
fully to reinstate him, but succeeded only in winning the Low-
lands and the border city of Berwick. When the outbreak
of war between France and England called off the English
forces, David Bruce redoubled his efforts and Scotland was
soon liberated under his scepter (1342).
The war between England and France, whose din drowned
out the petty Scottish campaigns, was the famous Hundred
Years' War, which lasted, with interruptions, from 1336 to
the middle of the fifteenth century, from Edward III. to
Henry VI. It opened with the claim of Edward to the
crown of France ; at its close Henry was master of the sin-
gle French town of Calais. The waters of the Channel and
the fields of France furnished battle-grounds, and England
was not once invaded by her enemy, though their allies, the
Scots, did break over the northern border. The struggle ex-
tended over the reign of five English kings, made famous the
names of Edward the Black Prince and Joan of Arc, and
included the bloody battles of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt.
This war, continuing through four generations, did much to
deepen the national enmity between the people of the two
kingdoms.
The first Plantagenet kings held wide domains in France,
acquired by inheritance from their Norman and Angevin
ancestors, and by dowry of their French wives. The weak-
ness of John had let most of these lands slip, and for several
reigns previous to the accession of Edward III. Aquitaine,
in southern France, with a narrow coast-strip in the north,
alone remained. Of these the French kings were covetous.
They had designs, moreover, upon the Flemish cities Ghent,
Antwerp, and others, whose manufactures of wool commended
them to the especial favor of sheep-raising England. With
these existing grounds of hostility little was needed to bring
the two nations to actual war. Edward furnished a pre-
6*
130 An Outline History of England.
text.* The death of Charles IV. of France gave him some
reason for asserting his right to the vacant throne, for Isa-
bella, his mother, was sister of the late king, and there was no
direct male heir. The lawyers, however, declared that by the
law of the Salic Franks, who founded French royalty, no
female might wear or transmit the crown. Edward was accord-
ingly passed over, and Philip VI. of Valois succeeded peace-
fully in 1328. Seven or eight years later, when Philip was
crowding in upon the English holdings, and aiding the Scots
of David Bruce, Edward re-asserted it and abandoned the
Scottish war for this greater contest. Such European alli-
ances as were possible he made, and with such German sol-
diers as he could buy of their hireling princes he recruited
his ranks. In the great sea-fight off Sluys, in June, 1340, he
won the first of his French successes, and indeed the brilliant
record of the royal navy has few more terrible triumphs.
The king's son Edward, feared in France and loved in
England as the Black Prince, was the hero of his father's
wars. The campaign of 1346 was his first in the field, and
on August 26 he — a youth of sixteen — commanded the right
wing of his father's army in the battle of Crecy. Philip,
with a superior force, made the attack. There was a striking
difference between the two armies, as there was indeed be-
tween the two countries. France was wealthy, populous, and
•EDWAHD'S CLAIM TO THE FRENCH CROWN.
(French sovereigns in italic.)
(1.) PHILIP III.,
THE BOLD,
reigned 1270-1285.
I I
(2.) PHILIP IV, Charles,
the Fair. Count of Valois.
I 'I
III | (7.) PHILIP VI.
(3.) LOUIS X., (5.) PHILIP V., (H.)CHARLES IV., Isabel, of Valois,
d. 1316. the Tall, the Fair, wife of Edward II. r. 1328-1350.
(4.) JOHN L, d. 1322. d. 1328. of England. |
d. 1316. | (8.) JOHN II.,
(7.) EDWARD III. THE GOOD,
of England. r. 1350-1364.
England and France. 131
in the full flower of feudal splendor, and the men who fought
under her lily banner were the proud barons and their retain-
ers and mercenaries. England was poor in purse and popu-
lation, but comparatively free; her soldiers were the stout
yeomen of the shires, accustomed to draw their cloth-yard
arrows to the head, and learning to fight for their country
rather than for a feudal lord. On this day, for the first time
in history, they had a battery of field-cannon for use against
the knights. The battle was a slaughter: the boy Edward
fought with the skill and bravery of a veteran,
While his most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp
Forage in blood of French nobility.*
The French lost 1,200 knights and 30,000 footmen, more
than the whole English army. King Philip fled in dismay,
and King Edward, embracing the prince, exclaimed, " Fair
son, my son you are in truth, for loyally have you acquitted
yourself to-day ! "
In the autumn an English army at Neville's Cross routed
the Scottish king, David Bruce, whom his French allies had
set on to invade England in the absenee of its chief defender.
In France the English power widened steadily ; after a year
the beleaguered port of Calais Mas starved into surrender.
Its stubborn resistance and its villainous reputation as a re-
sort of Channel pirates exasperated the king. Edward prom-
ised to spare the people if six leading citizens should give
themselves up to him. Five patriots followed Eustace St.
Pierre, who volunteered to be the first of the six, and the
chroniclers tell touchingly how the king's fierce anger melted
under the warm tears of his queen, Philippa, who besought
her lord to show mercy " for the sake of the merciful Lord
Christ." So the Calais people went scathless, but their town
did not go free until two centuries later, when its loss
stamped its name upon the hard heart of Queen Mary.
* Shakespeare, King Henry V., Act i, Scene ii.
132 An Outline History of England.
The intercession of the pope brought about a truce, which
both countries willingly accepted. But in 1355 the struggle
was renewed. The Black Prince sallied foith from Aqui-
taine, pillaging the pleasant country of central France, which
had never known the sight of war. The amount of the
plunder was enormous. It sufficed to fit out another army
in the following year, at whose head the prince ravaged the
valley of the Loire, and gained the road to Paris. The new
king, John, called " the Good," rallied 60,000 to block the
way. Edward, with 8,000 English and Gascons, was en-
trapped at Poitiers, and offered peace and a restoration of his
conquests rather than to risk a fight. John was sure of his
prey and scorned the terms. The battle of Poitiers was fought
September 19, 1356. By a reckless attack the Frenchmen threw
away the advantage of superior numbers; and the skillful
disposition of the English and their fierce charges won the
day for the Black Prince. King John was taken captive
and was exhibited to the Londoners in the triumphal pro-
cession, over which England went wild with enthusiasm in
the spring of 1357. For two years more France was a prey
to anarchy and Edward; then the regents consented to the
treaty of Bretigny, which marked the close of the first stage
of the long war. King John was to be released on the pay-
ment of 3,000,000 crowns in gold. King Edward renounced
his empty claim to the throne of France and the duchy of
Normandy, but he was confirmed in the possession of Aqui-
taine, Poitou, Guisnes, and Calais, and it is to be noted that
he held these lands henceforth independently as king of
England, not as a vassal of France like his predecessors.
The peace of Bretigny was unbroken for nine years. The
Black Prince remained on the Continent as duke of Aqui-
taine, but his ambitious spirit could not be bridled. Since
his own province was quiet he sought activity elsewhere.
The Spanish kingdoms were broiling in civil war. Dom
Pedro the Cruel, of Castile, found an able ally in the
England and France. 133
English hero, who won for him the battle of Navarete (1367),
and replaced him upon his throne. The expenses of this
campaign were a burden on Aquitaine, and the emissaries of
the French passed in and out among the people inciting them
to rebellion. In 1369 France and England grappled again,
but young Edward had won his last great battle. Broken
in health, despairing of his own succession, and fearful lest
his brothers should bar his son Richard from the throne, his
old energy was turned into impatience and cruelty. His
capture of Limoges was disgraced by a bloody massacre, but
he made no conquests — indeed, he did not hold his own —
and soon his sickness and the interests of his son Richard
recalled him to England. His brother, John, Duke of Lan-
caster, famous from his Flemish birthplace as " John of
Gaunt " (Ghent), led an English army into France, but the
French king's Fabian policy exhausted the English treasury
and prevented a decisive battle. John accomplished noth-
ing. City after city of Aquitaine admitted French garrisons,
and by the end of 1371 only two important towns, Bordeaux
and Bayonne, remained to England of all her wide realm .in
southern France. Within fifteen years the results of Crecy
and Poitiers had vanished, and the bloody campaigns of the
Black Prince had produced nothing but misery and lasting
hatred between England and France.
The reign of the third Edward has other claims to atten-
tion as important as the French wars. Within this period
of fifty years Parliament acquired the form which it
still wears. There was a time when its four orders — the
clergy, barons, knights, and citizens — met separately, each
considering the matter of especial interest to their order.
But after the Parliament of 1341 the prelates of the Church
and the specially summoned barons or " peers " met as one
body, while the elected members, both the knights of the
shires and the borough or town representatives, met as
another. So arose the Houses of Lords and Commons.
134 An Outline History of England.
Three times within this reign the kingdom was swept by
a murderous disease. In 134S, 1361, and 136& the " Black
Deatli " appeared in the English towns, and from them spread
through the kingdom. No pestilence of modern times can
be compared to it for destructiveness. More than one half
of the three or four million inhabitants of England are known
to have perished. Such a diminution of the population had
a deep influence upon society, and particularly upon Cu
condition of the laboring classes, as the troubles of the next
reign indicate.
The plague and the wars with France told terribly upon
the strength of England. All classes suffered, but the clerg}^
least of all. Their lands and houses, constituting a large
share of the best property in England, were free from
ordinary taxation, and their prelates and dependents had
not to offer themselves as targets for French bowmen. The
jealous baronage, led by John, Duke of Lancaster, attacked
the privileges of this class. John, a younger brother of the
Black Prince, Avas ambitious, tyrannous, and cruel. In his
father's later life he gained control at court and filled the
high offices with laymen, ousting the bishops and abbots
whom the king had raised to these positions. The incom-
petence of the new men and the failure of the French cam-
paigns brought about an alliance of the clergy under William
of Wykeham and the commons. The last act of the Black
Prince was to side with the people against his brother. In
the Parliament of 1376 the commons had the audacity to pro-
test against John's extravagance and mismanagement ; for
the first time in English history two of the royal ministers
were accused, convicted, and condemned ; the court was
purged of its unpopular courtiers, and Alice Perrers, the
favorite of the king, was banished. These and other re-
forms w r on for this Parliament the designation " the Good."
No sooner was it dissolved than John of Gaunt resumed
control, reversed its enactments, restored the favorites, and
England and France. 135
made a fresh assault on William of Wykeham and the
clergy. Prince Edward died June 8, 1376, and Parliament
acknowledged the succession of his little son, Richard. In
June of the following year died Edward the Third.
The intense hatred of Frenchmen which pervaded En-
gland in this century had one permanent effect. Until now
it had been doubtful what language would prevail in the
British Islands. Caesar had found a Celtic dialect there, and
had introduced the Latin tongue. The Anglo-Saxon migra-
tion had driven the Celtic people into Wales and Scotland,
and had established the Anglo-Saxon, or old English, language
so firmly that the great infusion of Danes among the people of
the islands left but an inappreciable number of Danish words.
The Norman Conquest in the eleventh century brought in the
French language, and made it the common speech of the
court and the aristocracy throughout the time of the Nor-
man and Angevin sovereigns, while the Latin, now corrupted
and fallen from the classical standards, was the language of
the Church and literature. Beneath this Norman-French
upper-crust the masses of peasantry and common people
clung to their English mother-tongue. Its disuse by learned
men suffered it to pass through many changes, and the Anglo-
Saxon of King Alfred's time would not be intelligible to the
Englishman of the time of Edward III. By the close of the
fourteenth century it had changed in form and substance, and
its vocabulary had been largely swollen by words from the
French and Latin. No important books had until now been
written in this dialect, which was ridiculed by the upper
classes. But the Hundred Years' War made all things French
still more obnoxious. English began to displace other
tongues in the schools ; in 1362 courts of law began to use
English, "because French had become unknown." William
Langland, who wrote a homely poem, " The Vision of Piers
Plowman," wrote in English, that it might be more widely
read. The poet Gower, and his contemporary, Chaucer,
136 An Outline History of England.
who died in 1400, used the common country speech for their
compositions. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and the prose
pamphlets and translated Bible of John Wiclif practically
settled the question that the new English should be spoken
and written by Englishmen.
John Wiclif, sometimes called the first Protestant,
was educated for the Catholic priesthood, attained great
learning, and became a famous teacher in Oxford Univer-
sity. His study of the Scriptures convinced him that the
Romish Church in England was not performing its proper
work. Its clergy should preach the Gospel and lead Christ-
like lives ; he found them amassing fortunes, misusing the
ecclesiastical courts, and seeking temporal rather than
spiritual influence, To inculcate his own doctrines he sent
out " poor preachers," clad in russet gowns, to labor among
the lowly. His active mind did not stop at this reform ; he
denied the right of the pope to levy taxes upon England.
The tribute which King John had pledged his kingdom to
pay was thirty-three years in arrears, and Parliament boldly
refused to pay it more. Wiclif applauded and defended
this defiance of Rome. John of Gaunt, in his quarrel with
William of Wykeham and the clergy, was thus brought for
a time into sympathy with Wiclif, and protected him
from the archbishop's condemnation for heresy. Repudia-
tion of the worldly ambition of the Church led the free-
thinking priest to an examination of its doctrines, and thence
to his denial (1381) of the dogma of " Transubstanti.ition."
To explain his position he wrote a host of tracts, in English,
copies of which, even before the invention of printing, made
their way among the people, and helped the " poor preach-
ers " to found the Christian sect called " Lollards " (meaning
psalm -singers), the forerunners of the English reformation.
Wiclif died in retirement as parish priest of Lutterworth,
his later years being devoted to his grandest work, the
translation of the Bible into the tongue of the common
England and France. 137
people of England. He died on the last day of the year 1384,
reckoned a great man in his own day, and now esteemed
anion o- the first men of Christendom.
Several sons of King Edward III. grew to manhood : (1)
Edward, the Black Prince, who died just before his father,
leaving a son, Prince Richard; (2) Lionel, Duke of Clar-
ence (the poet Chaucer's patron), who died in 1368, leaving
a daughter, Philippa, the ancestress of the earls of March ;
(3) John " of Gaunt," Duke of Lancaster, the ancestor of
the Lancastrian kings ; (4) Edmund of Langley, Duke of
York, from whose line sprang the Yorkist kings in the next
century, and (5) the Duke of Gloucester.
Richard II. ascended the throne at the age of eleven (1377),
his uncle of Gaunt being in the prime of life. England
was in miserable condition, resulting from the war-taxation
and the ravages of the plague. Moreover, the people, of
whom little has yet been said, were fairly astir. The three
Edwards had brought the nation to a consciousness of its
unity and its independence of any foreign power ; the
development of Parliament had admitted a new class to a
share in the government, and the spirit of Wiclif and his
Lollards was invading the stolid country-folk, and teaching
them to test for themselves their social and political system.
A change had in due course come over the condition of the
lower classes. Slavery no longer existed, and serfage and
villeinage in its various forms had nearly passed away. The
serf, or villein (who had lived upon his master's land in re-
turn for certain labor performed), had been released from
this obligation, and now paid a certain compensation in cash
or kind for his holding, in place of the old manual labor. The
Black Death appeared at the time when many villeins were
winning, and many thought they had already won, their free-
dom from this degrading service. The great land-owners
saw their laborers dying off like sheep. There was no one left
to tend the flocks or reap the grain, which rotted in the
133 Ax Outline History of England.
field. To secure herdsmen and harvesters the land-owners
obtained from king and Parliament, in the years following the
plague, certain "Statutes of Laborers," requiring all landless
men and women to work at a fixed low wage for any employer
who should demand their service; and the laborer was forbid-
den to leave his parish in search of better employment.
The proprietors, at their wit's end for labor, re-asserted
their claims upon those villeins and serfs who had gained at
least partial freedom. The sons and grandsons of freedmen
were hauled before the justices, and compelled to serve the
family to which their ancestors had been bound. Wide-
spread discontent and frequent local outbreaks mark the
history of these days. The protest of Wiclif against the
wealth of the Church was taken up by his disciples and
forced to its full extent. Socialistic ideas circulated among
the hard-working peasants, who saw the nobles and bishops
gorgeously arrayed, while their tenants perished with hun-
ger. John Ball, " a mad priest," as a courtier called him,
seemed sane enough to the crowds of Kentishmen who
listened to his sermons. Equality was his gospel, commu-
nity of property the burden of his homilies. "When Adam
delved, and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? " was a
text with which he roused the jealousy and envy of his
countrymen against the aristocrats.
In 1380 Parliament levied a poll-tax on all Englishmen,
and the next summer the poor farmers and artisans, excited
by the injustice which they had suffered, broke out in the
rebellion known as the " peasant revolt." Easily remem-
bered jingles in the common country-people's English passed
from mouth to mouth, giving the signals for the rising, and
it seemed as if the whole nation had risen in one day. Wat
Tyler and John Hales, with 100,000 Kentish farm-hands at
their backs, marched into Canterbury and dismantled the
archbishop's palace, seized London, burning John of Gaunt's
" Savoy house," and breaking into the Tower, and killing the
England and France. 139
archbishop and the poll-tax commissioner. On the north
bank of the Thames was another host, from Essex, bent on
the same mischief, killing lawyers and burning deeds, char-
ters, and law-papers as they advanced. King Richard, a
courageous lad of fifteen, fronted the Essex men and sent
them home with promises that serfage should exist no more.
Two days afterward Richard dealt with Wat Tyler's men at
Smithfield. The lord mayor stabbed the peasant leader for
insulting his king, and Richard proclaimed himself captain
of the rioters. They heard with joy his pledges of redress,
and then dispersed. Little did the insurrection profit. The
king and nobles raised armies, and stamped it out without
mercy; seven thousand of the poor peasantry were put to the
sword or sent to the gallows before autumn. Parliament at
its next session, a Parliament wherein sat scarcely a man
(save the borough members) who was not a landlord, de-
clared that the king had no power or right to fulfill his
promises to give away their property. So villeinage and
serfage remained lawful, but the natural causes which had
been at work before the pestilence soon revived, and by a
rapid and peaceful revolution free labor took the place of the
ancient form.
Although Richard played such a prominent part in the
suppression of the peasant-rising, he left the government
to his uncles, the dukes of Lancaster and Gloucester, for
eight years afterward. Their rule was inefficient. They
waged a fruitless war with France and Spain, spending the
money and strength of the nation and winning nothing.
The king's party, led by the earl of Suffolk, strove vainly to
overturn the regency, but Gloucester's " merciless Parlia-
ment" of 1388 exiled or executed the counselors of the
young king. The next year the vane of fortune swung
round, Richnrd secured the reins of power in his own hands,
and for eight years guided the nation steadily and well,
making peace with France, establishing the semblance of
140 An Outline History of England.
order in Ireland, and real prosperity at home. But this era
of good government was a preparation for such faithlessness
as he had exhibited to Wat Tyler's rebels. In 1397, having
divided his uncles, Lancaster and Gloucester, and gained
the support of the former, he threw off his disguise,
punished his enemies, and grasped at absolute power.
Gloucester died in prison ; of his friends the Arundels, the
earl was beheaded, and his brother, the archbishop, banished.
A submissive Parliament, awed by the king, or in his pay,
consented to these tyrannies, granted him a life revenue, and
appointed a commission of eighteen men to act in the place
of a Parliament. Parliament was dissolved, and the king,
co-operating with this small executive committee, entered
upon a career of absolutism that soon wrought his ruin.
Richard ruled henceforth with little respect for the rights of
nobles, clergy, or commoners. To rid himself of two dangerous
lords, Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, and the ambitious
Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, he banished them
from the country (1398). A few months later old John
of Gaunt died, and his son, the exiled Henry Bolingbroke,
succeeded to his title, duke of Lancaster, though the king
kept John's rich estates for his own use. Henry complained
of this injustice and set about to recover his rights. The
king, his cousin, was absent in Ireland when Bolingbroke
landed in Yorkshire (1399) with other exiles, who made com-
mon cause against the tyrant. The nobles of the north, Percy
of Northumberland and Neville of Westmoreland, joined
Henry. His uncle Edmund, Duke of York, regent for Richard,
turned from the setting to the rising sun. Upon the king's
return he found himself defenseless in the presence of a great
army. No one would fight for the tyrant, all men flocked
to the Lancastrian standard. Henry at first demanded his own
inheritance and a share in the kingdom; but this did not long
appease his appetite for power. A Parliament at West-
minster declared the king incapable of reigning, and decreed
England and France. 141
his deposition. The nearest heir in direct descent was the
boy Edmund Mortimer, great-grandson of Lionel, Duke of
Clarence, an elder brother of John of Gaunt. But his tender
years and few friends defrauded him of a hearing, when the
victorious Henry of Bolingbroke, now in his forty-fourth year,
demanded the crown by right of descent, and by right of re-
covery from the evil government of Richard. Parliament
accepted Henry as the lawful sovereign. The wretched Rich-
ard was imprisoned in the castle of Pontefract, where not
long after he died, or was murdered. He was the eighth and
last of the Angevin kings in the direct line. The House of
Plantagenet now divides among the descendants of Edward
III.'s younger sons, the dukes of Lancaster and York. It was
in Richard's reign that the statute of Praemunire, originally
framed in Edward III.'s time, was re-enacted. This was one
of the twists by which England shook off the hand of the
pope. This law made it a grave crime for any person to
bring into England any bull or letter of excommunication
from the pope without the consent of the king.
Henry IV.* (1399-1413) was the first of the Lancastrian
kings, and as he had his own right to the throne to vindicate
he could afford neither idleness nor oppression. He was under
obligation to the northern nobles, who had helped him to win
the crown, and to the archbishop, who had put it on his head.
But the friendship with the Percys soon turned to open war.
The earl of Northumberland, with his son, Harry Percy,
called " Hotspur," from his dashing border raids, had expended
THE DESCENT OF HENRY IV.
EDWARD III.
_J
I j i i " i
Edward William. Lionel, John Edmund
the Black Prince, Duke of Clarence, of Gaunt= Kate of Langley,
d. 1376. I I Swynford. Duke of York.
| The House of HENRY IV. | I
RICHARD IT., Mortimer. Bolingbroke, The House The House of
deposed 1399 by r. 1399-141£jL_ of York.
Henry IV. I ' Beaufort.
The House of
Lancaster.
142 An Outline History of England.
blood and treasure in guarding the frontier against the Seots.
For this the king did not reward them. Harry Percy had mar-
ried into the family of the Mortimers, and thus become related
to Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, already mentioned as
Richard's lawful heir. Wales revolted in 1400 under Owen
Glen dower, who claimed descent from the old Celtic stock.
Hotspur, Mortimer, and Glendower leagued against the king,
and were beaten by him near Shrewsbury, in 1403, where
young Percy lost his life. His father continued in revolt for
several years. Glendower retreated to the strongholds of
the Welsh mountains, and resisted the English until his death
(1410).
If the king, as the Percys charged, broke faith with the
barons, he kept it with the bishops. The lords of the Church
could not disregard the practical tendency of the Wiclifite
doctrines. Little as the abbots and deans may have cared for
purity of doctrine, they had a very sensitive regard for the
rights of property, which were recklessly assailed by the level-
ing Lollards. The first year of the fifteenth century (1401)
is memorable for the passage of a Statute of Heresy. King
Henry had already urged the regular clergy to put a stop to the
preaching of the " simple priests " of Wiclif 's sect. This act
of Parliament gave the Church authority to arrest heretical
preachers, teachers, and writers, to imprison them, and, on
their persistent refusal to abjure their errors, to burn them
alive in a public place, that the people might see and be ad-
monished. The bishops were eager to begin their persecu-
tion. William Sautre and John Badby, a priest and a lay-
man of Lynn, were the first martyrs of the reign — the leaders
in a procession of Englishmen, Catholic and Protestant,
who furnished food for persecuting flames for two centuries.
Henry's reign was brief and full of trouble. On May 20,
1414, he died in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster
Abbey, leaving his kingdom to his son, Prince Hal, who cuts
a merry figure with Sir John Falstaff in Shakespeare's play
England and France. 143
of Henry IV. Henry V. of Monmouth (1413-1422) had
been a main-stay of his father's reign, and the stories which
tell of his youthful roisterings can scarcely rest on solid foun-
dations. He was twenty-five years old at the time of his
father's death, and had already approved himself a soldier in
the war with Wales. Comely of face and figure, brave
and skillful in war, and ambitious to restore the military rep-
utation of England, Harry of Monmouth became a popular
hero like Richard Lion-heart and Edward the Black Prince,
and the exploits of Richard in Palestine, and of Edward at
Crecy and Poitiers, are matched by Henry's deeds at Agin-
court.
The Pollards troubled the first months of the reign. Sir
John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, an able soldier, a friend of
the king, and a leading man in the realm, turned Wiclifite,
and tried to protect his fellow-believers. He was denounced
as a traitorous demagogue, and some of his actions per-
suaded Henry that he was plotting the destruction of the
king and the chief men of the council. Cobham was taken
and burned, and many Lollards perished with him.
Nearly the entire reign of Henry V. was occupied by his
campaigns in France. His conquests mark the second period
of the Hundred Years' War. Since the peace of Bretigny
was broken there had been no serious fighting between the
two nations, though there had been as little settled peace.
At Henry's accession France was plunged in a civil war.
The king, Charles VI., was insane, and his nobles were fight-
ing for the mastery of the government. Henry immediately
asserted his claim to the French crown, basing his demands
upon the right of his grandfather, Edward III. That he
had not the shadow of justice on his side is evident, but
ambition he had and wonderful ability.
Before he sailed from England he had discovered and
crushed a conspiracy to dethrone him in favor of his cousin,
Edmund Mortimer. In 1415 he crossed to Calais with
144 An Outline History oir England.
an army, intending to engage in turn with the contending
factions. But at his approach contention ceased, and it was
a united host far greater than his own which faced his bow-
men at Agincourt, October 25, 1415. His peril was greater
than that of Edward at Poitiers, for his men were sick and
starving, and the enemy awaited his charge instead of forfeit-
ing their advantage by making the attack. The words which
Shakespeare puts in Henry's mouth on the battle-field are
much like those which the king really spoke. Before the
combat the earl of Westmoreland had wished that some of
England's idle warriors might be in their ranks. Not so the
king:
"No, my fair cousin:
If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss ; and if to live,
The fewer men the greater share of honor.
God's will! I pray thee wish not one man more."
The battle was long and stubbornly contested. But at
Agincourt, as at Crecy, no weapon could withstand the cloth-
yard shafts from the English long-bows. King Henry fought
in the thick of the battle, and had his helmet split open by a
French sword. His intrepid courage inspired his men to ex-
ploits almost beyond belief, and the sun set upon a plain
strewn with 11,000 French corpses. The English had won
the field.
They had won scarcely more. The victorious army was
so small and so ill provisioned that it was folly to continue the
campaign. The king went home to England. In 1417 he re-
turned with well-digested plans for the conquest of Normandy,
and a strong force to carry them into execution. In two
masterly campaigns he had won back the chief towns and
castles of this fair duchy, when a sudden turn in French
politics threw open the doors to a more splendid triumph.
Duke John of Burgundy, the most powerful noble in France,
was murdered by the party of the Dauphin Charles, son and
England and France. 145
heir of the lunatic king, Charles VI. John's revengeful son
and successor, Philip " le Bon," master of the king's person
and household, betrayed his country to King Henry. By
the treaty of Troyes (1420) Henry of England was made
regent of France during the life of Charles VI. and heir to
the French crown at his death. To cement the union Henry
took Catharine, the princess-royal, to Avife. The country
north of the Loire owned him as regent, but in the southern
provinces the disinherited Dauphin Charles maintained a
prolonged but ineffectual struggle for his rights. At King
Henry's death (August, 1422) his son, a babe of nine months,
was acknowledged King Henry VI. of England and heir of
France. Two months later the mad Charles died also, and
the baby king of England was formally proclaimed king
of France. In his will Henry V. named his two brothers,
Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, and John, Duke of Bedford,
as regents of England and France respectively.
7
146 Ax Outline History of England.
CHAPTER IX.
LANCASTER AND YORK. 1422 A. D.- 1485 A. D.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY VI. TO THE DEPOSITION OF RICHARD III.
The enormous power which Henry V. had wielded was
jeopardized by his death. Even the arrangements which he
had made for the management of the two kingdoms were
not fully respected. John, Duke of Bedford, was allowed to
retain the regency of France and to continue his brother's
struggle with the Dauphin, hut the other brother, Gloucester,
was intrusted with the empty honor of "protector," the
government of England being really conducted by a council
of lords — Church and lay — directed by Gaunt's son, Henry
Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. Parliament retained little
influence in the realm, and the commons almost none. The
baronage had grown rich from the plunder of France, and
the Church from the taxes of England. Through their
representatives in the council these two classes exercised
almost absolute authority, and the liberties which the rise
of the commonalty had brought almost within reach of the
English nation vanished.
The dauphin, whom the national party in France crowned
at Poitiers as King Charles VII., inherited but a small share
of his father's dominions. By the provisions of the Treaty
of Troyes (1420) he inherited nothing, the whole realm
passing to the English House of Lancaster, whose armies al-
ready occupied two thirds of France by virtue of Henry V.'s
conquests, and his alliance with the great dukes of Burgundy.
This English rule could not be popular, and the private
grudge of the Burgundians against the French royal family
Lancaster and Yoek. 147
was destined to die of itself, or to be smothered by other
interests. Whenever Burgundy withdrew her hand from
England's friendly grasp the English power in France must
inevitably fall. Such was the French situation when John
of Bedford was installed as regent. In diplomatic and mili-
tary skill John was scarcely inferior to the late king, his
brother, and could he have depended, as did the latter gen-
eral, upon the united support of the nobility at home he
might have given some degree of permanence to the English
domination of France. The new French king was weak in
mind, and appalled by the disaster which had befallen his
kingdom. The South, which remained true to him, and the
patriots who clung to the royal line drew little inspiration
from his feeble efforts to expel the foreigners. The Scots
and Milanese who were sent to his assistance were terribly
beaten at Verneuil (1424). After this battle, affairs in En-
gland and a temporary defection of the Burgundians tied
Bedford's hands for the space of three years. In 1428 active
hostilities were renewed. Orleans, the finest city remaining
to Charles, was invested by an English army, and after a
year's siege was on the point of capitulation when — one of
the most marvelous events in history — a peasant girl saved
the city and the nation.
Joan of Arc — " Jeanne Dare " is her real name — was the
daughter of a laboring man of Domremy, a hamlet on the
borders of Lorraine, in France. She was three or four years
old when Henry of Monmouth's yeomen routed the French
knights at Agincourt, and she was in her eighteenth year
when the miseries of her nation called her from her father's
cottage to the camp of her rightful king. She had been a quiet,
thoughtful child, and in dreams and visions by day and by
night she had held conversations with saints and angels.
Mysterious " voices " told her what to do. When she grew to
young womanhood and heard the neighbors tell of the war and
the degradation of France, the voices whispered to her that the
148 An Outline History of England.
King of heaven had chosen her, the peasant girl of Domremy,
to deliver the king of France from his enemies. Her father's
threats could not make her disobey the sacred call. The
priests and the captains who tried to stay her shrank back
before her unquestioning faith in her mission. Jeanne was
not the only superstitious person in the realm, and her faith
bred faith in others around her. They brought her to
Charles, to whom she said : " Gentle sir, I am Jeanne the
Maid. The heavenly King sent me to tell you that you shall
be crowned in the town of Rheims, and you shall be lieuten-
ant of the heavenly King, who is the King of France."
Rheims was then in English hands, and it was difficult to
believe her words ; but it was even more difficult to doubt
her calm confidence, and the maid was furnished with the
armor and the troops that she required. By a bold maneuver
she entered Orleans and brought succor to the besieged.
At the head of the garrison she sallied forth and captured the
English forts beyond the walls, liberating the city from its
long constraint (1429). The French soldiery reverenced her
courage and saintly purity; in the English camp her name
was at first a by-word, but after her successes they feared the
" Maid of Orleans " as a witch, declaring that her guiding
" voices " were of the devil. Jeanne's victories seemed indeed
magical to the Englishmen, who had considered themselves
invincible; but they overlooked the simple fact that the hero-
ism of the Maid had at last kindled the patriotism of the
people, and the force of the nation was rapidly gathering to
the support of the dauphin. Before the end of the year
Charles was crowned in the cathedral of Rheims, and Jeanne,
her mission accomplished, begged to be allowed to go home to
the sheep pastures of her native Lorraine. But the king, who
had found her useful, refused her request. She remained
with the army, but her successes were less marked now, and
in 1430 she fell into the hands of the Burgundians, the foes
of France and Bedford's friends. Their duke sold her to the
Lancaster and York. ]49
English, who held her for a year a prisoner in Normandy,
and afterward tried her for witchcraft and heresy. She
asserted her innocence and purity to the last. When the
judges gave sentence against her she appealed to "her Judge,
the King of heaven and earth," saying: "In all my doings
God has been my lord." They condemned her to be burned
to death. The French kinor miorht well have given his crown
to ransom her, for without her he would have been crown-
less, but the ingrate let the sentence take its course. In 1431,
before she was yet twenty-one years old, Joan of Arc, pray-
ing aloud and crying " Jesus !" with her last painful breath,
was burned in the city of Rouen.
Four years after Joan's martyrdom England's grip upon
France was loosened. The duke of Burgundy joined King
Charles. The regent Bedford died in the same year (1435),
and the area of English influence on the Continent grew less
with every campaign. The duke of York, as regent, en-
deavored to save a portion of the realm for Henry, but in
vain. Henry Beaufort, cardinal and bishop of Winchester,
upheld the hands of the English generals, and after his re-
tirement the earl of Suffolk continued his policy. Still the
English lost ground. In the year 1450 the last Norman town
surrendered to France, and in 1453 the defeat of Lord
Talbot, of Shrewsbury, won Gascony also. The Hundred
Years' War was at an end. England lost not only her recent
conquests and re-conquests, but all her lands in France,
except the town of Calais, were taken from her.
Very little had Henry VI. to do with the events which
have been recorded in this chapter. During the first twenty
years of his reign he was under guardianship as a minor, and
the last ten were marked by long periods of idiocy which
disqualified him for government. He was married to Marga-
ret, Princess of Anjou, but until 1453 he had no heir, and
a vigorous controversy raged over the matter of the succes-
sion. Out of the disputed claims of the ducal families of
150 Ax Outline History of England.
Lancaster and York, called from their badges the "Red
Rose " and the "White," sprang the thirty years (1455-1485)
of civil uproar, which are known as the Wars of the Roses, and
to whose history we have now come. The vexed question
of the royal inheritance will be better understood by refer-
ence to the genealogical table of the descendants of Edward
III. (p. 150.) For three generations the crown had been in the
family of Lancaster — the three Henrys being son, grandson,
and great-grandson of John of Gaunt. Concluding that
Henry VI. would die childless, the Lancastrian party looked
to Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, grandson of John
of Gaunt by his mistress, Catherine Swynford. Richard
Plantagenet, Duke of York, was his principal rival. Richard
had double claim to the inheritance if he chose to press it.
From his mother, Ann Mortimer, he received the rights of
the earls of March, the descendants of Edward's third son,
Lionel, and from his father he inherited the claims and titles
of Edmund, Duke of York, Edward's fifth son. The ille-
gitimate Beauforts had once been debarred from the throne
by law; if, therefore, the Lancastrian king had no children
Richard Plantagenet would be his lawful heir; meanwhile
his prior claim as earl of March was kept in reserve.
The contest opened, therefore, with Edmund Beaufort, the
Lancastrian Duke of Somerset, and Richard Plantagenet,
Yorkist, striving for recognition as heir to Henry VI. In
1453 a son, Edward, Prince of Wales, was born to the king
and Margaret, his queen. This offered a peaceful settlement
for the quarrel by annulling the claims of both parties, and
had Henry been able to rule in his own name the nation
might have escaped the civil wars ; but his malady increased,
and the periods of lethargy through which he passed made it
necessary for the helm of the State to be in a steadier grasp.
Duke Richard was appointed protector of the realm — he
seems to have had the favor of the people — during Henry's
incapacitation. Queen Margaret with an eye to her son's
Lancaster and York.
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future supported the Lancastrian, Edmund Beaufort.
The king's disease came and went; in his periods of sanity
he resumed the government, and, guided by Somerset, took
harsh measures against York. The strength of the Yorkist
party lay in the earls of Salisbury and Warwick. In 1455
the royal army was beaten by Richard and the two earls in
the first battle of St. Albans, and Edmund Beaufort was
slain. Richard resumed the regency, and the king relapsed
into imbecility. At his next recovery, in 1458, there was
another revolution. The Yorkist party defended itself, and
in the battle of Northampton, 1460, captured the king.
Elated by his victory, and encouraged by his full pos-
session of the throne, Richard now asserted his immediate
claim to the crown as the descendant of Lionel, John of
Gaunt's elder brother. This Parliament refused to allow in
full, but it was decided that the duke of York, and not the
prince of Wales, should succeed Henry at his death. This
called the Red Rose into the Held. A new duke of Somer-
set had succeeded Edmund, and with him stood Lord Clif-
ford in the struggle for the inheritance of Prince Edward.
They cut the Yorkish forces in pieces in the battle of
Wakefield (1460). Duke Richard died on the field, and
the earl of Salisbury on the scaffold. The duke's son,
Edward, and Salisbury's son, the earl of Warwick, con-
tinued the Yorkist resistance. Unchecked by defeat, they
occupied London, gathered a great army in the east, and in
the early spring of 1461 (March 29) met the Lancastrian
army on Towton Field. Twenty thousand bloody corpses
were strewn on the snow-covered field at sunset, where the
banner of the Red Rose had floated at dawn. The fiercest
battle that had been fought in Britain in four centuries was
won by Edward. The pitiable king fled to Scotland with
his stout-hearted queen and her little son, while Parliament
and citizens alike hailed Edward of York as king. In June,
1461, he was crowned as King Edward IV.
Lancaster and York. 153
Edward IV. was a strong man, handsome and brave, but
with much of the tyrant in him. With parliaments he had
small patience, and under him that body lost the strength
which it had been accumulating since the death of Simon
of Montfort. For several years he did not once summon
the lords and commons, managing by various unconstitu-
tional devices to raise, without legal taxation, the money
which the prosecution of his ambitious schemes required.
The estates of the conquered Lancastrians were forfeited
to the crown ; subsidies were granted and collected for
wars which were never fought ; and when Parliament was
called together no more the king invited the rich citizens
of London to give of their substance " benevolences " into
the royal treasury. A royal invitation was a command, and
these reluctant offerings were not withheld. Beyond all
these sources of revenue Edward was a money-maker in
a manner new to English sovereigns. The world was awak-
ening from the sleep of the Middle Ages. The crusades had
increased communication between the east and west, and
trade had followed in their wake. The king became a mer-
chant, owning and freighting a fleet of ships whose
voyages turned fresh streams of gold into his treasure
chests. In this fifteenth Christian century Europe was
all astir. Medieval customs, the feudal system, the tem-
poral supremacy of the Catholic Church had passed their
prime, and the old order was ready for a change. In Italy
art was blossoming forth into its most perfect flower. In
the courts of western Europe a Genoese sailor was showing
a set of curious maps, and begging for means to discover a
new world. John Gutenberg, a German, was cutting types
for the first printed book ; and in every university and
many a monastic library there was wide-eyed wonderment
at the treasures of Greek and Latin literature which, long
preserved in Constantinople, had been dispersed at its capt-
ure (1453). Arts, sciences, learning — intellectual activity of
154 An Outline History of England.
every sort was born again. The Wars of the Roses held
England back from the general advance. Her artists were
rude imitators, she had no poets, her first printers served their
time in continental offices, and Columbus was sent with
rebuffs from London to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella.
King Edward's wars did not end with his accession. The
great Lancastrian lords had lost their lives and their lands in
the hour of defeat, but the great allies of York claimed un-
usual favors from the duke of whom they had made a king.
The earl of Warwick, "the king-maker," himself, was
Edward's most rebellious subject. After Towton battle the
unconquerable Queen Margaret had roused the Lancastrians
to other futile efforts for her son. To these the battle of
Hexham (1464) had put an end, and Edward felt encouraged
to show his independence. He offended Earl Warwick and
the Yorkist lords by marrying Lady Elizabeth Grey, and heap-
ing favors upon her relatives of the house of Lancaster. To
strengthen his seat on the throne he betrothed his sister to Duke
Charles the Bold, of Burgundy, the leading peer of France.
The ambition and jealousy of the duke of Clarence,
Edward's brother, furnished Warwick with a center for his
plots. Clarence married the earl's daughter (1469), and the
allied nobles seized the person of the king. But their propo-
sition found no supporters. Edward, soon released, and mov-
ing quickly, pressed the conspirators so hard that they were
forced to new treasons for their safety. Queen M irgaret,
ready for any alliance which should benefit her husband and
the prince of Wales, promised the earl that her son should
wed his daughter. Thus the remnant of the strength of
Lancaster joined with the main-stay of the house of York to
ruin Edward. Surprised by this sudden turn, the king
escaped to France, while the distracted Henry VI. was
brought from his prison for a few weeks of feeble grandeur.
But the subtlety of the king-maker was surpassed by Ed-
ward. Charles the Bold had furnished assistance, and his
Lancaster and York. 155
own conduct after landing in England rallied an army to his
standard. Henry, the lawful sovereign, had been restored,
and Edward declared that with the king he had no quarrel.
His royal rights and title he would waive ; only for his
dukedom of York would he fight. This specious statement
made the way easy. Even his brother, Clarence, took part in
this vindication of the house of York. The Lancastrians
lacked a leader. King Henry was king only in name ;
Prince Edward was a youth of seventeen ; and the traitor
Warwick, the strongest man in the party, had so identified
himself with the Yorkist cause in the past that half his pres-
ent host mistrusted his sincerity. Edward IY. alone was
kingly, and he was soon the only king. He struck his ene-
mies before they could unite; Warwick's army was routed
at Barnet in April, 1471, and three weeks later Margaret
was defeated at Tewkesbury, and her son, the prop of the
house of Lancaster, either fell in the fray or was mercilessly
murdered at its close. On May 22 the husband and father,
Henry VL, died in his prison. No direct male representa-
tive of the house of Lancaster survived.
Edward IY. resumed the crown unchallenged. For twelve
years he reigned securely. There was a brief war with Scot-
land, and for a longer period there were rumors of war with
France. The king renewed the claims of Edward III. to
the throne of that kingdom, and when that cloud of war had
blown over, his negotiations with Louis XI. for a marriage
between the dauphin and the English princess, Elizabeth,
blew up another thunder-head, which, however, held no
lightning. Diplomacy was the king's best weapon, and by
its means he kept his kingdom from serious foreign wars, and
gave it the peace which was needed after the disorder of
the civil strife. His brother Clarence, whom he feared, was
convicted of treason and put to death in London Tower
(1478) — drowned in a butt of malmsey, said the babblers of
that time. If Edward supposed that the death of Clarence
156 Ax Outline History of England.
insured his son's succession he was in grievous error. An-
other brother remained, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, whom
many believed guilty of the blood of Henry VI., and upon
whom the sudden death of Edward IV., April 9, 1483, drew
dark suspicion of poisoning.
The king left four children — Edward, Prince of Wales,
henceforth Edward V.; Richard, Duke of York, soon to
be smothered in the Tower; Elizabeth, afterward queen of
Henry VII., and Katharine. Again the accession of an infant
gave opportunity for usurpation. Edward was in his thir-
teenth year and incapable of reigning in person ; his uncle,
Richard of Gloucester, gained possession of the boy and his
brother, and seized the government by force. To give his
usurpation a legal gloss he obtained a decree from a council
of friendly nobles, declaring that the marriage of Edward
IV. and the Lady Elizabeth Grey was invalid, and their chil-
dren, therefore, were illegitimate and powerless to inherit.
That his elder brother, Clarence, had been condemned as a
traitor tainted the blood of that family, and thus Richard of
Gloucester remained the next male heir of the house of
York. Two months only were needed to consummate this
iniquity ; the duke hurried his nephews (Edward V. and
Richard of York) to London Tower, and they were never
seen again. They were doubtless murdered there — smoth-
ered, one story has it — by their uncle's order.
In June, 1483, the usurper was crowned as King Rich-
ard III. But not by deeds of blood alone could the king
hope to establish himself firmly upon the throne. The
partisans of Lancaster were his natural enemies, and the best
men of York were shocked by his heartless murders. The
king was keen enough to see that he must make real con-
cessions to the nation for very security's sake. His brother,
Edward IV., had erred on the side of tyranny. By neglect-
ing Parliament, and by forced benevolences, he had habitually
overstepped the bounds which had hedged the English king
Lancaster axd York. 157
since the barons brought King John to book at Runnymede.
By abandoning these forms of misrule Richard might still
gain favor. He need have been in no ignorance of his
subjects' wishes. The people of London declared in petition:
" We be determined rather to adventure and to commit us
to the peril of our lives and jeopardy of death, than to live
in such thralldom and bondage as we have lived a long time
heretofore, oppressed and injured by extortions and new im-
positions against the laws of God and man, and the laws and
liberty of this realm, wherein every man is inherited." This
and like addresses to the throne were effective. Parliament
was assembled ; the oppressions and exactions of the late
king were censured, and new and better laws were enacted.
But this mildness failed to save Gloucester, secure though he
deemed himself to be. The Princess Elizabeth, his niece,
represented all that was left of the house of York, and her
the king determined to wed.
Another marriage had been planned for the maiden prin-
cess. A representative of the house of Lancaster still lived.
This was Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. His grand-
father, Owen Tudor, was a Welsh gentleman of little impor-
tance in history had he not married Catharine, the widowed
queen of Henry Y. From this marriage sprang the earl of
Richmond, Edmund Tudor, who, with his father's eye for an
advantageous marriage, wedded Margaret Beaufort, of
the ducal family of Somerset. Thus Henry Tudor, son
of Edmund and Margaret, had in his veins, from his mother
and his father's mother, the Lancastrian blood of John of
Gaunt. As the last of the Lancasters he was an object of
suspicion to the Yorkist kings, and prudence prompted him
to reside in France rather than in his own earldom. The
Lancastrian politicians joined with those Yorkist partisans
who had no stomach for Richard's usurpations to marry
Henry Tudor to Elizabeth of York. Before the marriage
could be compassed the conspiracy was discovered, and
153 An Outline History of England.
Buckingham, one of its leaders, was beheaded for his share in
the plot. But Henry of Richmond kept beyond the king's
reach until 1485, when dispatches from England informed him
that the plans were ripe. Upon his landing Richard per-
ceived how insecure was his own footing in the island. In
all parts of the kingdom there were Lancastrian risings,
while the friends of York, for the mosrt pat, rose with theirs
or remained quietly in their homes. The last battle in the
struggle of the Roses was fought, August 22, 1485, on Bos-
worth Field, in Leicestershire. King Richard's men deserted
him in the face of the enemy ; he had no chance of flight,
but —with the bravery of his Plantagenet blood — he sold his
life at the cost of many, and fell in a vain attempt to kill
the Tudor. The Red Rose triumphed over the White that
day, as the White had vanquished the Red at Tewkesbury
fourteen years before, but the union of the Red and White
in the marriage of Henry and Elizabeth ended forever the
strife of Lancaster and York. At Richard's death Henry of
Richmond was accepted by Parliament as Henry VII., the
first of the Tudor kings.
The Tudor Monarchs. 159
CHAPTER X.
THE TUDOR MONARCHS. 1485 A. D.- 1547 A. D.
HENRY VII. AND HENRY VIII.
The five sovereigns of the House of Tudor occupied the
English throne from Henry Tudor's accession in 1485 to the
death of Elizabeth Tudor in 1G03. Within this period of
one hundred and eighteen years the kingdom passed through
a series of radical changes in its internal government, in its
relation to Ireland, Scotland, and the continental nations, and
in its connection with the Church of Rome, and with the New
World, which in 1485 was only a fancy of a penniless Italian
dreamer. This century marked the transformation of the
medieval English nation into a modern State, and the change
was accompanied by a splendid outburst of those intellect-
ual forces whose beginning had thrilled western Europe
while the island kingdom stagnated under the curse of
civil war.
This era of national growth in wealth and culture did not
tell with equal force upon the development of free govern-
ment. The Tudors were a strong-willed family of mon-
archs, who opposed at every turn the efforts of their subjects
to limit the authority of the crown. The checks which had
gradually been placed upon the absolute power of the king
were essentially these, some of them as old as Magna Charta
itself : 1. No new tax might be imposed upon the nation
without the consent of a Parliament in which nobles,
clergy, and commoners were represented. 2. The consent
of such a Parliament was requisite for all new laws and all
changes in the old law. 3. Without legal warrant no man
160 An Outline History of England.
might be arrested and deprived of his liberty. 4. Accused
persons were entitled to speedy trial by a fair jury in the
county where the offense was committed. 5. All crown
officers were liable to jury trial and punishment for injuries
committed upon persons or property, even though such in-
juries should result from obedience of the king's orders.
These five safeguards secured to England the most liberal
government in Europe. It is true that they had not always
been respected by tyrannous kings, but it is equally certain
that they were so well established that the king who broke
through any one of them branded himself as an oppressor.
Edward IV. had tried to evade some of these limitations, and
by force and guile had succeeded in strengthening his posi-
tion at the expense of Parliament. Richard III., as we have
seen, angled for a short-lived popularity with the bait of
constitutional reform. Henry VII., when firmly seated on his
throne, returned to Edward's policy, and worked with steady
purpose to upbuild the personal power of the sovereign.
Henry's first care was to make firm his seat. As the repre-
sentative of Lancaster he might serve as a rallying center for
a party, but his descent was by a devious line, and his claim
to the crown of England as his inheritance was absurd. He
was king by force of arms as truly as Richard had been
king by treason and murder, and the one had no clearer royal
title than the other. Parliament decreed that Henry VII.
and his heirs should rule England ("and France," as the
empty title still read), and on this Parliamentary act, backed
by the incontrovertible arguments of conquest and possession,
the king's position rested. The remnant of the family of
York was a possible source of disturbance. The two sons of
Edward IV. were dead, by Richard's order — or as good as dead
— in the Tower dungeons. Elizabeth, their sister, the king
married, uniting the blood of Lancaster and York. The
young earl of Warwick, son of the " malmsey " duke of
Clarence, and grandson of the King-maker, was cousin and
The Tudor Moxarchs. 161
next of kin to Edward V. ; him Henry hurried to the gloomy
Tower. Such havoc was made among the Yorkist princes
that the party was in straits for a standard-bearer. In this
exigency two remarkable impostors appeared in England,
reviving for a little the withered rose of York.
The first of these " pretenders " was one Lambert Simnel,
who claimed to be that earl of Warwick whom Henry held
in prison. He gathered a band of Yorkist exiles in Europe
and landed with them in England, in 1487, to claim the king-
dom as the heir of his cousin, Edward Y. Men of note be-
lieved him to be Warwick, and gave their lives in battle for
him at Stoke, where he was defeated and captured. The
impostor was made a scullion in the royal palace. Little
daunted by his fate, Perkin Warbeck, another claimant, more
successful in his pretensions and more wretched in his end
than Simnel, took up the banner of the cause. He claimed
to be that Richard, Duke of York, whom the red-handed
Richard III. had smothered in the Tower with his brother,
Edward Y. Warbeck is said to have been a Fleming of low
birth, but he bore a marked resemblance to the prince he
claimed to be and his personal charm won powerful support.
Profiting by Simnel's experience the managers of the fresh
pretender showed their prize in foreign courts before bring-
ing him to England. For a time he imposed upon King
Charles VIII. of France, and on the duchess of Burgundy,
aunt of the real Duke Richard. King James IV. of Scot-
land gave him substantial aid, and in 1496 Warbeck and the
Scots' king invaded England. The invasion came to noth-
ing. Warbeck was captured in the following year and
placed in the Tower with Henry's other enemies. His re-
peated attempts to escape made him a dangerous prisoner,
and in 1499 he and his fellow-prisoner, Warwick, whom
Simnel had personated, were put to death. The White Rose
was blasted.
While dealing with the perils that threatened his line the
102 An Outline History of England.
king was pursuing that definite course of strong government
which characterized his house. The existing checks upon
the royal authority, which have been enumerated here, were
as galling to the Tudor sovereigns as they would have been
to the Norman conqueror. Parliament sat infrequently in
the last thirteen years of Henry VII. Yet the kingdom had
ample revenues, and the king amassed a private fortune
independently of the consent of the lords and commons.
Certain commercial duties — tonnage and poundage — were
granted him for life by an early Parliament, and these in-
creased in profit with the rapid extension of English com-
merce. Wars with France proved as profitable to Henry as
they had been to Edward IV. Money for the campaigns
was obtained from the people, but no battles were fought.
The English money went into the royal treasury, the French
king at the same time paying for the privilege of peace.
As the landlords had revived forgotten bonds of servitude
when the BTack Death had depleted the labor market, so
Henry, lacking the tax levies which only Parliament might
impose, revived ancient feudal rights of the crown over the
land-owners, and compelled the payment of fines and dues
which had been in desuetude for generations. Nobles paid
dearly for exemption from the support of armed retain-
ers, this method of punishment yielding profit to the king,
and depriving the feudal lords of the private armies with
which, in the past, they had intimidated the royal power.
The development of the art of warfare further strengthened
the monarchy. In the simpler days, when bow and arrow,
ax and spear, served for offensive armor, a force of peasants
was match for a troop of knights, and many a battle went by
preponderance of numbers. Gunpowder, first employed, per-
haps, in the battle of Crecy, revolutionized the science of war.
The Lancastrian kings owed much of their success in France
to their cannon. The castles of the nobles, which were so
many strongholds against the king in case of civil war, were
The Tudor Monarchs. 163
at the mercy of the royal artillery, and the long castle sieges
of the early reigns do not appear in the records of the Tudors.
Landless merchants and other men of wealth had to share
their gains with the avaricious Henry. " Benevolences," the
forced contributions levied by Edward IV., and renounced by
Richard III., were revived, and collected with especial zeal.
Morton, the royal officer who was charged with their collec-
tion, was so persistent in his search for wealth that men
came to speak of " Morton's fork." They said that if a man
lived extravagantly he was mulcted of a benevolence on the
ground of evident wealth, and if he sought to avoid this
fate by unostentatious way of life the sheriffs pounced upon
him as a miser who must divide his hoard with the king.
It would have been impracticable for the sovereign to use
the ordinary jury-courts as a means of enforcing these proj-
ects for raising money; an impartial jury would have re-
sisted such acts as tyrannous. So the king had recourse to a
court composed of high officials and members of his council.
This court — sometimes called "Star Chamber," from the
decorations of its meeting-room — heard cases concerning
fraud, libel, feudal privileges, forgery, perjury, riotings, etc.,
and was in this reign and the next an instrument of the most
hateful tyranny. Its judges being appointed by the crown,
and no jury being present, the court was a facile tool.
Henry VII. died in 1509, leaving to his son, Prince Henry,
undisputed title to the throne, and a treasure of £2,000,000.
Besides this son there had been another, Arthur, and two
daughters. Arthur, the eldest prince, had married Catharine
of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish
patrons of Columbus. He soon left her a widow, and the spe-
cial dispensation of the pope was needed and obtained for her
marriage with Prince Henry (1509). The Princess Margaret
found a royal husband in James IV. of Scotland, and so in
after j^ears became grandmother to Mary, Queen of Scots.
Mary Tudor, the youngest of Henry's daughters, also wedded
164 An Outline History of England.
a king, Louis XII. of France. After his death she married
an Englishman, Charles Brandon, and so became grand-
mother of another noble and more pitiable girl, Lady Jane
Grey. It will be well to bear these several marriages in
mind, for the history of the sixteenth century in England
has much to do with wedding, divorcement, and rival claims
to the succession.
Henry VIII. — " bluff King Hal " — was eighteen years old
when he came into his father's noble inheritance in 1509. He
was in ruddy health, tall, and fair to see, excelling in every
manner of English sport and not ill-trained, in the learning
of the schools. In his veins the blood of Edward III. was
again united after long separation in the families of Lan-
caster and York. From his father he received a splendid
treasure and a peaceful and prosperous kingdom, whose long
quiescence, stagnation indeed, was now giving placa to an
unprecedented activity in letters, art, and science. His father,
moreover, bequeathed to him a vigorous mind, a stubborn
will, and a recklessness of life and law which served him
well in his thirty-eight years of absolute rule (1509-1547).
The popular favor which greeted the new king was
strengthened by an act which augured ill for the security of
personal rights. Empson and Dudley, two officers who had
aided Henry VII. in his harsh forms of tax-collection, were
put to death upon a trumped-up charge.
Henry thirsted for war as a means of asserting England's
place among the continental powers, as well as for the glory
which personal success would bring to him. His marriage
with Catharine of Aragon determined his place in the strug-
gle which was vexing Europe. After the expulsion of the
English from their French possessions the French kings had
steadily gained in power at the expense of their great feuda-
tories. France was now well consolidated, and outranked
all other kingdoms in wealth and military power, having just
conquered and annexed a large share of Italy. To hold her
The Tudor Monarchs. 165
in check was the object of the Holy League, which was
formed about the year 1511 by Ferdinand of Aragon, Queen
Catharine's father, with the pope and the Venetian repub-
lic. In 1512 Henry joined with his father-in-law, and the
following year the Emperor Maximilian added his weight to
the column which pushed the French back from Italy. En-
gland's active share in the military operations of the league
was unimportant; but her alliance against France at this im-
portant juncture curbed the arrogance of that proud mon-
archy. In 1513 Maximilian and Henry drove the French
cavalry from the field of Guinegate so swiftly that the day
has ever since been called " the Battle of the Spurs." In the
same year the Scots, always on the side of France, were
beaten at Flodden Field by Earl Howard of Surrey, and their
king, James IV., was slain. Peace with both countries fol-
lowed — a peace which the diplomatic ability of Thomas
Wolsey prolonged for seven years (1514-1521).
Wolsey was the son of a wealthy commoner of Ipswich.
By fidelity and adroitness he worked his way up in the civil
service of the State and into the heart of the king's favor.
Henry gave him rich offices in the Church, he became bishop
of Lincoln and archbishop of York. Like his early pred-
ecessor Lanfranc, he was politician first and prelate after-
ward. He now (1513) took charge of the foreign policy of
England and formed a passive alliance with France, where
Francis I. began to reign. Ferdinand of Aragon died, and
his famous grandson, Charles V., succeeded to the kingdom
of Spain. With kings like these to deal with Wolsey needed
every resource, and his master indeed spared none. The
pope sent the commoner's son a cardinal's hat and a legate's
commission. This placed him at the head of the English
Church. He was already foreign minister, and as chancellor
of the realm he controlled the judicial machinery of the
nation. In his personal revenues, the magnificence of his
palaces, the splendor of his household, he was little behind
166 An Outline History of England.
royalty itself. All this authority was devoted to Henry's
aggrandizement.
The development of Charles V.'s power aroused a new
ambition in King Henry's breast. Charles was a nephew
of Queen Catharine, and had now, as German emperor
and Spanish king, possessions which surrounded and over-
shadowed those of France. With such an ally the house
of Tudor might regain the crown of France which Edward
III. had claimed, Henry V. had won, and Henry VI. had
forfeited. The conquest seemed easy, and Charles came
to England in person to urge his royal nephew to action.
Francis foresaw his peril, and in an interview with Henry
near Calais sought to recover his friendship. The gorgeous
preparations for that royal visit christened it "The Field of
the Cloth of Gold." But the interview was fruitless. Henry,
Charles, and the pope again joined hands in secret against
Francis — Charles promising to marry Henry's only child, the
Princess Mary, his own cousin though she was. Mary was
formally recognized as heir to the English throne, and
Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, a distant scion of
the stock of Edward III., was beheaded on a charge of treason
(1521) in order to clear the way for Mary Tudor's accession.
The approach of a foreign war perplexed the cardinal. Dur-
ing seven peaceful years he had succeeded in governing En-
gland and raising sufficient revenue without a single session
of Parliament. Now a Parliament, with all its spirit of inter-
ference in the king's business, must be called to vote money for
the war. Parliament (1523) voted less than half the sum
demanded. In 1525 the government asked for the hated
" benevolences." Never had the burden fallen so heavily
or been more stoutly resisted. Bold voices were heard pro-
testing against the lawless extortion. Bolder hands drove
the king's agents from their towns. The levy failed. Mean-
while the war was raging. Charles was winning victories
from Francis and spending Henry's hard- wrung gold for his
The Tudor Monarchs. 167
own benefit. England " went out shearing and came back
shorn ; " she helped to pay for humbling France, but lost her
money for her pains. Charles repudiated his pledge to marry
Mary Tudor, and Henry in dismay transferred his friendship
to his former foe, the king of France.
The course of events has now brought us to the central
event of Henry's reign — his divorce from his first queen.
This single act led to the fall of Wolsey, the eleva-
tion of Cromwell, the quarrel with the pope, and the
final separation of the Church of England from the Church
of Rome. The royal pair had been married by special per-
mission of the pope — for their relationship otherwise pro-
hibited the union. Catharine was some years older than her
husband ; her sons were all dead, and it was unlikely that
she should leave him any other heir than the Princess Mary.
The king was naturally anxious concerning her succession,
for no woman had yet reigned in England. He now (1525)
suspected that the death of his sons showed that the marriage
was accursed ; he had moreover been attracted by the wit
and beauty of Anne Boleyn. a lady of the queen's house-
hold. Superstition or passion prompted him to put away
his wife, but serious obstacles confronted him. A pope had
blessed the union, and only a papal divorce might dissolve it.
The pope, Clement VII., was under the thumb of the
Emperor Charles, and dared not disgrace that monarch's un-
happy aunt. The queen protested that she had been a true
and loyal wife and could not be put away without sin. In
1529 an Italian, Cardinal Campeggio, was sent by the pope
to judge the case with Cardinal Wolsey, but before the
court could give sentence the pope stopped the proceedings
and transferred the case to Rome. Maddened at this turn
of affairs the king stripped his favorite of his offices, honors,
and wealth (1529), and would have brought him to the block
on charge of treason, but disease claimed the broken-spirited
man before he reached his prison. He died at Leicester in
168* An Outline History of England.
1530. Among his last words being those which Shakespeare
put into verse:
" Cromwell, Cromwell !
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies."
The great cardinal's real successor in the royal favor was
Thomas Cromwell, a man of obscure origin who, after a
strange variety of employments, had attached himself to
Wolsey's fortunes and clung to his master to the end.
He combined shrewdness with audacity to a degree which
made him the ideal minister of an absolute ruler like Henry,
who fixed his mind on definite objects, and suffered no
earthly obstacle to block his path. The opposition of the
pope now shut the king from his dearest wish — divorce and
a new marriage.
Cromwell audaciously advised the king to disavow the
pope's authority, and to annul the divorce himself At
first the monarch shrank from such a step, and by the
advice of Cranraer, whom he was rapidly advancing to the
archbishopric of Canterbury, he called upon the universities
of Europe to pronounce upon the validity of his marriage
with his brother's widow. By unblushing bribery he ob-
tained a favorable opinion from a portion of these scholars,
although the best men were unanimous against the divorce.
This flimsy indorsement served the purpose. Archbishop
Cranmer pronounced the divorce (May, 1533). The king had
already (in January, 1533) married Anne Boleyn, the gay
maid of honor.
By this act the pope was openly defied. He declared
the king excommunicated; and annulled the divorce; but
Henry's will, upheld — if indeed need were — by the statesman
Cromwell and the prelate Cranmer, was inflexible. His Par-
liament of 1534 passed the acts of Supremacy and Succession,
the former declaring the king to be the " only supreme
The Tudor Monakciis. 169
head on earth of the Church of England," the latter disinher-
iting the Princess Mary, and making Elizabeth, the new-born
daughter of Anne Boleyn, heir to Henry's throne. Hence-
forth no appeals from English ecclesiatical courts should be
decided in Rome ; the papal revenues from English churches
were stopped, and the king became what the pope had been
since St. Augustine entered Canterbury, the spiritual and
temporal master of the English Church. To Thomas Crom-
well, as vicar-general, the king deputed his limitless eccle-
siastical power.
Refusal to accept the Act of Succession was treason, and
this act included recognition of the validity of the divorce,
an admission which a devout Catholic could scarcely make.
The act became in Cromwell's hands a weapon of persecu-
tion. With it he convicted the leading Catholics of treason.
Sir Thomas More, the chancellor, was among the earliest, as
he was among the noblest, victims. John Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester, was beheaded for obedience to his conscience
(1535).
Cromwell was not content with striking here and there a
leader among the opposite party. He served his king with
a zeal surpassing that which the dying Wolsey lamented.
The Church which Henry had now separated from Rome by
law must be thoroughly subservient to the king. Its reve-
nue, its courts, its offices, its lands, its very doctrines must
be at his disposal. The power delegated to the vicar-general
was sufficient to accomplish this design. Fresh enactments
gave the monarch the appointment of all bishops, and a new
and startling movement brought its property and revenues
under royal control ; this was the dissolution of the mon-
asteries.
Several hundred of these monkish cloisters existed in the
kingdom. They had originated in a fervent desire to spread
the Gospel and cultivate holiness of life. For a long period
they had fulfilled their design, and through the Dark Ages they
8
170 Ax Outline History of England.
preserved whatever was preserved of art, science, and litera-
ture. But most of them had lost their high aims. The monks
of the sixteenth century were rich and worldly. By pur-
chase and bequest they had acquired one fifth of the soil of
England, and the pursuit of wealth and luxury had super-
seded the quest for heavenly things. Popular report said
that the convents were the abodes of luxury and vice.
The commissioners whom Cromwell sent to investigate
the affairs of these religious houses reported to Parliament
in 1536 that a minority of the cloisters were well managed,
but that drunkenness and vice prevailed in two thirds of
the number. These latter were in general the smaller estab-
lishments, and these (376 in number) were now suppressed,
their revenues being turned into the royal treasury.
The few larger abbeys remained untouched while the
many small houses were broken up. It seems that many ot
the latter were prized in the communities in which they had
existed. In the north of England the monasteries were in
favor with the common people, and the bitterness caused by
their abolition became a revolt. Robert Aske, a young Catho-
lic lawyer in one of the northern counties, headed a rebellion
called "The Pilgrimage of Grace " (1536), and many Catho-
lic lords and Yorkist nobles openly or in secret abetted this
uprising. Thirty thousand armed men protested against the
arbitrary rule of Cromwell, the separation from Rome, and
the disinheritance of Mary. Henry's minister dealt with the
rebels as Richard II. had dealt with Wat Tyler and the in-
surgent peasantry of Kent and Essex. The army at his dis-
posal was weak, but at his promise to comply with the chief
points in their demand the " pilgrims " dispersed joyfully to
their homes. Then Cromwell gathered force and swept through
the north with an avenging sword. He broke his pledges of
reform (1537), and hunted the rebels to exile or death. The
lords and abbots fared worse, and a long line of noble names
was added to the list of traitors hanged on Tyburn gallows.
The Tudor Monarciis. 171
Such displays of tyranny aroused the English spirit to
resist. But the civil wars and the jailers and headsmen of
Henry VII. had left few men or women of the Plantagenet
family to whom the disaifected subjects might offer the
abused crown. One of the surviving Yorkists was Henry
Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, a grandson of Edward IV.
He lived in an atmosphere of plots; for every man who hated
Henry Tudor hoped for better things under Henry Courtenay.
Exeter, w T ith bis brother, Lord Montague, and his mother,
the countess of Salisbury, were executed in 1539 for treason.
At the same time a new campaign was begun against the
monasteries which remained. The abbots, fearing the conse-
quences of delay, surrendered their estates to the king — some
had already fallen to him by the treason of their occupants.
To the monks thus deprived of their homes pensions were
granted. Some of the Church lands were sold, others granted
to favorites of the king — all went to increase the holdings of
nobles and gentry, and to strengthen these classes against a
restoration of monasticism.
Not all the violence which accompanied the abolition of
the monasteries arose from the mere separation of the
Church from Rome, or the edict against religious establish-
ments. A more powerful influence was working in the
minds of Englishmen. The Church which had been cut
loose from Roman rule was about to cut loose from Roman
doctrines. The belief as well as the organization of the
clergy was to undergo a change. The Protestant reforma-
tion was at hand.
By the year 1546, the date of Luther's death, Protestant-
ism had reached its fullest extent on the Continent. This
reform had its influence upon England, where Wiclif's
Bible and Lollardy had prepared the soil for good seed.
The early years of Henry VIII. 's reign coincided with the
period of the greatest excitement over the Lutheran revolt,
and in the controversy of those times the king was the ally
172 An Outline History of England.
of the pope. As his sword was at the pope's service in the
Holy League, his pen was also wielded in the war of words.
In 1522 Henry put forth a book in defense of Catholic doc-
trine, for which the pope dubbed him " Defender of the
Faith," and which called out Luther's remark, " When God
wants a fool he lets a king teach theology." This was in
1522, before the divorce question set all old notions aside.
Wolsey was a faithful Catholic, and he attempted by persecu-
tion to prevent the spread of the new ideas in England. Nor-
folk and More, his immediate successors, continued this part
of his policy, but Cromwell reversed it.
What the vicar-general believed we cannot say, but his
influence certainly favored the Protestants. His ally, the
primate Cranmer, was instilled with Lutheran doctrines,
though he did not desire to force them on the Church in
opposition to the royal will. For a time the king let himself
be ruled by the vicar-general and the archbishop. In 1536
Coverdale's edition of the English Bible, which William
Tyndale had translated, was not only published in En-
gland but by royal command appointed to be read in the
churches (1538). Two years before new articles of religion
were set forth, by the king's own hand, prescribing what
Christians should believe. They simplified the Roman for-
mula, but retained its most important features, lagging far
behind the radicalism of Luther and the Swiss and French
reformers. Henry himself was no Protestant. Only neces-
sity had forced him to break with the papacy, and he hated
Luther as soundly after the divorce as before it.
The outrageous conduct of the people, who vandalized the
abbey churches and insulted the priests at mass, caused the
king to draw back from all reforms of doctrine which looked
toward Protestantism. In 1539 the " Six Articles," the hate-
ful " whip of six strings " for the correction of Protestants,
was enacted in accordance with his wish by Parliament. It
declared six points of doctrine, the denial of any one being
The Tudor Monarchs. 173
heresy; the heretic punishable with death on the second, if
not the first, offense. The six strings were : 1. Transubstan-
tiation — the dogma that the blessing of the priests at com-
munion transforms the bread and wine into the actual body
and blood of Christ. 2. Communion in only one kind
(bread) for laymen. 3. Celibacy of the priesthood. (Luther
and his preachers were married.) 4. Inviolability of vows
of chastity made by monks and nuns. 5. Necessity of pri-
vate masses. G. Necessity of confession of sins to a priest.
The heavy penalties consequent upon infraction of these ar-
ticles were kept off by the hand of Cromwell.
But Cromwell, though yet strong, was beset by enemies.
The despoiled monks, the subjected clergy, the proud nobles,
who chafed at the supremacy of a man of common birth, all
strove to poison the king's mind against him. As Cromwell's
advice in regard to the divorce of one queen was the means
of his rise, his recommendation of another hastened his fall.
In 1536 Anne Boleyn, whose family were of the Protestant
faction, incurred the king's disapproval; a subservient Par-
liament declared the marriage void by reason of her unfaith-
fulness. She was executed as a traitor, and her widowed
husband solaced himself next day by marrying Jane Sey-
mour. She died in 1537, giving birth to a son, Edward, who
became heir to the throne, his half-sisters, Mary the Catholic
and Elizabeth, having been debarred from the succession on
the ground of illegitimacy. For three years the sovereign
lived single, taking his fourth wife, in 1540, on the word of his
minister Cromwell. This marriage was one of Cromwell's
prudent measures to gain a political alliance with the Prot-
estant princes of Germany. The lady was a German of noble
family, sister of the elector of Saxony. But she was tall,
coarse, and ill-featured — " a Flanders mare !" the rough king
said when he first saw his bride. Her homely face was
Cromwell's death-warrant. Henry withdrew his support
from the man who, as he thought, had tricked him. The
174 An Outline History of England.
Catholic Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the leading noble, accused
the vicar-general of treason. Conviction, without a hearing,
and execution followed in a few days, and in July, 1540, one
of the strongest heads that ever directed English affairs fell
beneath the axman's stroke. As for poor Anne, the king soon
cast her off, and married in her stead Catherine Howard, a
niece of the cluke of Norfolk.
From the death of Cromwell (1540) until shortly before
the death of the king (1547), the Howards — Norfolk, and his
son, the poet Surrey — were the chief ministers of the govern-
ment. Henry himself was personally supreme in the king-
dom, and exercised through his ministers greater powers
than had been wielded by any king since Magna Charta.
Parliament met, it is true, with considerable regularity, but
neither House dared, or cared, to run counter to the will of
the sovereign. In the House of Lords the power of the
Church had been crushed; for the mitered abbots sat there
no longer, and the bishops were the nominees of the king.
The temporal peers were equally submissive. Gibbet and
block had removed the men who might have led an opposi-
tion, and grants from the Church lands had bound the others
to their royal patron. A new landed aristocracy had been
founded by the distribution of the broad acres of the monks,
and far more of the leading families of England date their
prominence from the conquest of the English Church by
Henry than from the conquest of the island by William
the Norman. The commons were scarcely behind the lords
in their obedience to the wishes of the sovereign, for the
members of the lower house knew the color of Henry's gold,
and had shared in the plunder of the convents.
Thus constituted, Parliament, established as a check
upon royal authority, became a tool of tyranny. The king's
own court of Star-Chamber was not so quick to pass sentence
on his enemies as this Parliament, whose bills of attainder —
at an hour's notice, and without a hearing — tried, condemned,
The Tudor Monarchs. 175
and sentenced to confiscation and death whomsoever the
king would destroy.
The duke of Norfolk was a Catholic and a papist, but none
dared whisper to the king the possibility of restoring the papal
authority in the English Church. Henry had not gone far
toward Protestantism, but he had settled this one point for-
ever: that no Italian pope should supplant an English king
in any department of Church or State. On the Continent his
sympathies were with the pope against the Protestants.
Reform in the Church he undoubtedly desired, and to
some extent he carried his desire into execution. The serv-
ice in English churches was pruned of certain superstitious
practices ; the litany and prayers were revised and printed
in English, and, with some restrictions, the English Bible
was recommended to the people as the ground of their faith
and life.
The king and the men who stood with him against the
Lutheran reformation hoped that a universal council of
Christendom might peacefully incorporate these moderate
changes in the Roman Church, and thus stay, if not close, the
schism which was rending the Catholics of western Europe.
In 1543 Henry is again found in alliance with the emperor
Charles V. for a war with France. Leagued with Charles he
hoped to sway the proposed Catholic council to his moderate
schedule of reform; but the council held at Trent in 1545
was a disappointment. It denounced with unmeasured
vehemence the heresies of England, as well as those of the
German reformers, and it upheld without apology the super-
stitions and errors against which Luther had raised protest,
and which the English had abandoned. The Council of
Trent determined that there should be no compromise
between Rome and Protestantism, and Henry's hope faded
when the emperor took sides with the pope.
But the theologians had no terrors for the English king.
He refused to retrace a single step which separated him
176 An Outline History of England.
from the papacy, nor would he advance further toward the
Protestantism which was growing around him. While lines
between the two parties were being more strictly drawn, the
Howards and Bishop Gardiner leading the Catholics, and
Cranmer and Latimer showing more of the Protestant color,
King Henry stood by himself, leaning toward neither faction.
Anne Askew and three others, who denied the first of the
six articles, were burned for their heresy; but on the other
side Bishop Latimer, the most powerful preacher in England,
the royal chaplain, was acquitted of heretical guilt.
Shortly before his death the king changed ministers again;
the Howards went to the Tower, and the Seymours, the earl
of Hertford at their head, came to the council-board. The
earl of Surrey died a traitor's death, but Norfolk remained
alive in prison when the king, Henry VIII., breathed his last,
January 28, 1547. Catherine Howard had already been exe-
cuted for unwifely conduct, which was accounted treason,
and the king had taken a sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who
outlived her much-married lord.
The wars of Henry's later years had been of slight im-
portance. In Scotland the authority of the pope was still
acknowledged, and the influence of France was ever present
to keep alive the old hatred of England. Henry VII. had
married his daughter, Margaret, to James IV., King of Scots,
in the hope of forming a bond of peace and friendship be-
tween two kingdoms of common race and interests; but the
Scots continued to take their orders from France. James
V., whose army invaded England in 1542, was the son of
Henry VIII.'s sister Margaret, but the blood-bond counted
for nothing in the war which followed. After the disgrace-
ful conduct of his cowardly troops at Sol way Moss he re-
turned to Scotland to die. Undismayed by the failure of
his father's policy, the English king made peace with Scot-
land, one condition being the marriage of James's little
daughter, Mary Stuart, with his own son by Jane Seymour,
The Tudor Moxarchs. 1*77
Prince Edward. Had this been consummated the union of
the t\v r o kingdoms might have been anticipated by fifty-
years. But it was not to be. The French party in the north-
ern kingdom defeated the negotiation, and Henry renewed
the war, sending Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, to
ravage the Lowlands, a commission which was unsparingly
performed. An invasion of France ensued, to punish that
nation for its work in Scotland. The campaign ended, how-
ever, without important acquisitions. In this reign Wales
was incorporated with England (1536), and no distinction
held henceforth between Welshmen and Englishmen.
8*
178 An Outline History of England.
CHAPTER XL
THE LATER TUDORS. 1547 A. D.-1603 A. D.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD VI. TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH.
Three children of Henry VIII. survived their father.
Mary, daughter of Catharine of Aragon, was the eldest;
Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter, was next in age, and
Edward, the nine-year-old son of Jane Seymour, was the
youngest. The question of the succession had sorely vexed the
king, and at his request Parliament had made several separate
settlements. Mary was first made heir, but the divorce made
her an illegitimate child and destroyed her claim. Then
Elizabeth was chosen, but by her mother's " treason " her
claim also was forfeited. Finally the king was empowered
to determine for himself the line of inheritance. He named
his son as his successor, and, in case Edward should die with-
out issue, directed that the inheritance should pass in order
to the Princess Mary, the Princess Elizabeth, and then to the
heirs of Henry VII. 's daughter Mary Brandon, Duchess of
Suffolk. The will furthermore appointed a commission of
sixteen men to govern the kingdom until Edward should
attain his majority.
Unwilling to commit the government wholly either
to the Reformation or to Rome the king had shrewdly
mingled the two English parties in the composition of this
council of regency, but the ambition of one of its members,
Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, frustrated the plans of
the king. Seymour was in sympathy with the Reformation.
He was Queen Jane Seymour's brother, and uncle of Edward
VI., and he was executor of the royal will. Making the
The Later Tudors. 179
best of his advantages he excluded Gardiner, the strongest of
the Catholics, from the council, gained possession of the
person of the boy-king, and had himself declared duke of
Somerset and " Protector of the Realm." Under this title
he exercised full royal power in the name of his nephew,
Edward VI.
To complete the work which King Henry had under-
taken in Scotland was Somerset's first duty. The mar-
riage treaty which was to unite King Edward with Mary
Stuart was yet unfulfilled, and the benefits which would ac-
crue from its fulfillment seemed to warrant every exertion
to attain that end. The safety of England was continually
imperiled by the near neighborhood of Scotland, the friend
of France and Rome. The Protector led an army across the
border to enforce the marriage treaty, and defeated the
Scottish lords at Pinkie, not far from Edinburgh, September
10, 1547. Much renown his victory gave the English arms
yet the campaign must be reckoned a failure, for Queen Mary
did not fall into English hands; on the contrary, she was well
guarded by the Catholic party, who took her to France (1548)
and destroyed the hopes of the duke by betrothing her to
the dauphin, afterward Francis II. England had only a
few trophies, some useless prisoners, and a heavy debt to
show for the blood and treasure spent in the war.
The Protestant party was unchecked throughout the reign
of Edward VI. (1547-1553). Somerset was its natural
leader and Cranmer his willing assistant in all matters of
Church reform. In Henry's time the archbishop, though in-
clining toward the new doctrines, had allowed himself to be
governed by the king's will, and had not permitted his
Protestantism to injure him in the king's favor. He had
married a wife in Germany, taking example by the Lutheran
priests, but at sight of the whip of six strings he igno-
miniously deserted her. Yet Protestant he was by sympathy
and belief, and the accession of Edward, relieving him of his
180 An Outline History of England.
fears, left him free to bring the English Church into con-
formity with the reformed doctrines. Other bishops — the
learned Ridley of London, the eloquent Latimer of Worces-
ter — and such theologians as Bncer and Peter Martyr, aided
Cranmer by their labors. The historian Hallam sums up in
six paragraphs the innovations which were forced upon the
English Church in the reign of Edward VI.
1. English supplanted Latin as the language of the serv-
ice. Prayer, homily, and hymn were henceforth in a speech
understood of the people. From the Romish missal and
breviary, with such excisions and additions as the revised
creed required, Cranmer translated the first Book of
Common Prayer (1548), the prayer-book (with slight re-
visions) of the English Church to-day.
2. Statues, paintings, windows, and altars which were
connected with the churches, and which the ignorant popu-
lace had regarded with a veneration which approached
idolatry, were now destroyed, and ceremonials, such as the
use of incense, tapers, and holy water, were abrogated.
3. The adoration of the saints and the Virgin Mary was
forbidden, the doctrine of purgatory was denied, and prayers
for the souls of the dead were given up.
4. Auricular confession was made optional. Henceforth
the believer might or might not confess his sins in the ear of
the priest and receive absolution. This liberty soon put an
end to the use of the confessional in England.
5. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation was
abandoned, and " the doctrine of the real presence of the
body and blood in the bread and wine of the communion-
table was explicitly denied."
6. Lastly, priests were allowed to marry.
By the repeal of the six articles the whip of six strings
Avas broken. The harsh laws against Lollardy were erased
from the statute books, for the leaders of the Church now
held the beliefs for whi.h Wiclif's followers had been
The Later Tudors. 181
persecuted. Forty-two articles of religion were set forth
in 1552 by Cranmer, embodying the principles of the Refor-
mation. The omission of three has left them the thirty-nine
articles which still contain the Anglican creed.
These changes were forced down into the Church from
the top. A few statesmen and prelates, the merchants of
London and the large towns of the east, the scholars of the
universities, were heartily in favor of the reform, but there
was no such feeling among the peasantry. They wanted
back their old priests, the mysterious ceremonies, Latin
chants, and wonder-working relics which had been the
attractive part of their religion. With the destruction of
the monasteries, now followed by the suppression of several
hundred chantries and colleges, hard times had dawned for
the peasants. The new land owners living in London were
more exacting than the monkish landlords.
Moreover a new industry was supplanting the husbandry
which had employed the peasant farmers. The value of En-
glish wool, rising steadily with the growth of cloth manufact-
ure in Flanders, turned the English plow-land into sheep
farms. Many tenants were evicted from their small holdings
to make room for these pastures, and much land which had
lain common was seized by the manor lords and inclosed for
private use. Wages dropped as the price of food mounted
higher.
It was natural for the ignorant to believe — as their priests
doubtless told them — that these miseries were caused by the
new religion. This they did believe, and became riotous in
their demonstration against their " heretical " rulers. In Nor-
folk a tanner, Robert Ket, led a formidable insurrection
against the landlords, whose sheep-ranges had crow r ded
honest industry out of existence. It was not the duke of
Somerset who crus'hed Ket's revolt. The Catholics — a quiet
but numerous party in the council — had always opposed him,
and when the Norfolk revolt broke out his enemies combined
182 An Outline History of England.
to give the chief command to their colleague, John Dudley,
Earl of Warwick, son of that magistrate Dudley who had
perished with Empson in the first months of Henry VIII.
Warwick's energetic campaign against the rebels strength-
ened him with the council, which on his return deposed Som-
erset for misgovernment and gave the protectorate into the
hands of Duley now (1550) duke of Northumberland.
The king himself remained in the background while his
protectors and archbishops were revolutionizing the Church.
Though a mere boy, and consumptive, Edward was wonder-
fully precocious. Books and study, especially the ponderous
theological works with which the age abounded, gave him
strange delight. He loved to listen to the sermons of the
sharp-tongued Latimer, and in what way he could he was
zealous to bring in the Reformation. By his order eighteen
grammar schools were founded in English towns, and the
old house of the Grey Friars in London was given up to
Christ's Hospital for the famous school of the Bluecoat boys.
It is useless to speculate to what lengths Edward's Prot-
estantism would have carried him had he been spared for
long life. At the age of sixteen his frail constitution yielded
to his disease. On July 6, 1553, he died, leaving no issue.
Foreseeing the king's untimely end, Northumberland had
formed a plan for the succession. By the terms of Henry's
settlement, the Princess Mary — thorough Catholic and papist
though she was — stood next after Edward. This daughter of
Catharine had refused to accept the new tenets and practices,
and had clung to the religion of her father with true Tudor
obstinacy. The Protestants recognized that she, if queen,
would show them no favor. More concessions might be ex-
pected from the Princess Elizabeth, but Northumberland had
a private advantage to serve. By his advice Edward changed
the order of succession. Both princesses were set aside as
illegitimate, and the crown was assigned to the descendants
of Henry's sister Mary, Duchess of Suffolk. The heiress thus
The Later Tudors. 183
chosen was Lady Jane Grey, a beautiful, intelligent, and
high-spirited Protestant girl. Lord Guilford Dudley, son of
Northumberland, had lately married her, and by her acces-
sion the son of the cunning Protector would doubtless mount
the throne beside his bride.
The death of Edward brought these plots to light. Mary
heard of them and by flight eluded the Protector's grasp,
and rallied her friends to her support in Norfolk. Lady
Jane was astounded at the news that she was queen of En-
gland. Northumberland proclaimed her, and she bore the
title for ten days (Juno 10-19, 1553). But she had no real
support save the personal following of her father-in-law. He
raised an army to disperse the forces which gathered about
Mary Tudor, but even before a battle his men deserted to
her and left him almost alone. With tears of disappointment
on his cheeks he tossed his cap in air at Cambridge, hailing
J)Iary as his and England's queen. The sovereign entered
London with acclaims. Lady Jane and her husband were
placed in the Tower, and Northumberland, guilty of high
treason by his own admissions, was beheaded. The Catholic
bishops whom Edward's ministers had deposed were restored
to their cathedrals. Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer were in
their turn deposed^ and the two latter cast into prison, Bishop
Gardiner became chancellor and leader of the council.
Mary's heart was set upon a complete restoration of the
papal power in England. She w x as her father's daughter in
the firmness of her will, but otherwise she was the true child
of her Spanish mother. Her cousin, the king and emperor
Charles V., of Spain, who had once promised to marry her, was
her political mentor. He was now too old to wed, but his
son, Philip of Spain, was a candidate for Mary's hand. The
emperor's experience taught him the temper of the English
people and he counseled his zealous cousin to proceed with
moderation. Much as the country-folk of England might
long for the old religion the towns-folk were attached to the
184 Ax Outline History of England.
new, and the landed proprietors who had been enriched by
the spoil of the abbeys would resist any thing looking toward
resumption of Church property.
The counter-revolution was therefore cautiously begun.
The first backward step was the restoration of the religious
system to its condition at the death of Henry VIII. The
anti-Lollard legislation was revived; the six-stringed whip
became for the second time the test of orthodoxy. Masses
were said in the churches and Cranmer's prayer-book gave
way to the Latin missals and breviaries. Priests who had
married were hooted out of their parishes and efforts were
made to rehabilitate the saints and Virgin in the popular re-
gard. In general this reaction took place quietly; in some
quarters it was hailed with delight, for the populace had not
kept pace with the bishops, and the orders to believe this
doctrine and deny that dogma had fallen upon uncompre-
hending ears. So far the queen was satisfied with the prog-
ress of her reign; the wise emperor counseled her against
forcing her people to accept the pope's supremacy again or
to give back the lands and revenues which they derived
from the distribution of the property of the Church. As long
as she was content with this moderation Mary retained a
measure of popularity. It was the project of the " Spanish
marriage " which first turned her subjects from her.
The emperor urged the queen to fortify her position by
marrying his son Philip, heir to his possessions in Spain,
Italy, and the Low Countries. Philip was a Catholic of the
bigoted strijje, and Mary's union with him would insure the
supremacy, of the pope in England, and might eventually
found a Catholic league, which should overpower the Prot-
estant princes of Germany, and heal by force the schi-m
in Christendom. All English Protestants who lived in
the hope of better times ahead, all English patriots who
dreaded the interference of foreign pope or king in England's
government, all selfish lords and commons whose share
The Later Tudoes. 185
in the Church lands bound them to uphold the system of
King Henry VIII., were united against the proposed
match.
There were isolated risings against the marriage in the
western counties, and in Kent fifteen thousand men gathered
under Sir Thomas "Wyatt and swooped down on London.
The qneen had few troops, but she had the dauntless blood
of a Tudor, and her personal courage called twenty thou-
sand Londoners to her defense. " Stand fast against these
rebels," she cried in her harsh, man's voice. " Fear them not,
for I assure you I fear them nothing at all." Wyatt was
captured and beheaded. There had been talk of putting
Lady Jane Grey in Mary's place ; her execution, with that
of Lord Dudley, her husband, dispelled such treasonable
rumors. Some of the rebels had cheered for the Princess
Elizabeth and Edward Courtenay, and Mary thought best
to lodge them in the Tower. The emperor thought the
scaffold a fitter place for them, but Mary's English advisers
dared not tempt English loyalty too far, and after a time
Courtenay went abroad, and Elizabeth, in the seclusion of
Chaucer's Woodstock, studied with Roger Ascham, and
romped with the country squires.
The suppression of the rebellion gave the queen confi-
dence to go forward. Parliament consented to the marriage,
and in midsummer of 1554, Philip of Spain married his En-
glish bride at Winchester. But .the council, though impo-
tent to prevent the union, had influence enough to rob it of
its most threatening consequences. The Spaniard was called
by courtesy King of England, but the jealous parliament
never crowned him, and denied his right to the throne in
case the queen should die childless.
Mary's policy unfolded rapidly. To restore the realm
again to the bosom of " Mother Church " was her cherished
aim, and this she was able to accomplish. Parliament re-
versed the sentence of treason which Cromwell had obtained
186 An Outline History of England.
against Cardinal Pole, the English nobleman whom the pope
had now named as his legate in England. This was fol-
lowed by a formal declaration in favor of reunion with
Rome. Queen Mary, Philip, and the lords and commons
of England went down on their knees in the presence of
the legate on the day of St. Andrew, November 30, 1554,
and, humbly confessing their sin of schism and rebellion,
received the Church's absolution and the blessing of the
pope. Save for the dismantled abbeys, whose lands were
not restored, the English Church now stood where it had
been before Luther dreamed of "justification by faith," or
Henry Tudor cast off the pope's authority that he might
wed the lady of his love.
The history of the latter half of Mary's reign is a sad tale,
in which the queen is not the least pitiable figure. In ac-
cordance with her will to serve the pope she undertook to
eradicate the Protestant stain from her fair land. The sur-
viving leaders of the Reformation in the reigns of Henry
VIII. and Edward VI. paid dearly for their acts. Bishops
Hooper and Ferrar were condemned for heresy and burned.
John Rogers, who had helped Tyndale translate the Script-
ures, died exulting in the flames. Rowland Taylor, vicar of
Iladleigh, pious and beloved, was a lamented victim. The
learning of Bishop Ridley and the wit of Latimer availed
them not. The two perished in one fire, in Oxford, Octo-
ber 16, 1555. The gray-haired Cranmer had double claims
to hatred, for he not only stood first among the reforming
clergy, but it was his decree which divorced Henry VIII.,
and by that degradation broke the heart of Queen Mary's
mother, Catharine. The archbishop, right at heart, perhaps,
but sadly deficient in manly resolution, renounced his faith
to save his life. But Mary was relentless. Six times the
wavering Cranmer avowed and disavowed his heresy, but
when they bound him to the stake his spirit grew stronger,
and thrusting forth his right hand he held it steadily in
The Later Tudors. 187
the hottest flame, exclaiming, " This hand wrote the recan-
tation, and it shall be the first to suffer punishment."
These names were not alone among the English martyrs.
Smithfield fires burned often in 1556 and 1557, and in other
market-places throughout the kingdom men and women
gathered to see how the heretics would die. They died with
honor, and their heroism did more than pamphlet and preacher
to spread the faith for which they suffered. " Play the
man, Master Ridley," the dying Latimer had been heard to
cry to his fellow among the fagots. " We shall this day
light such a candle by God's grace in England, as I trust
shall never be put out." And so they did, these martyr bishops
and the two hundred men and women of lesser station, whose
execution fixed upon the persecuting Bishop Bonner and the
queen the horrid title " Bloody." Protestantism grew with
each new act of repression, and the miserable queen saw
the failure of the terrible policy by which she had hoped to
purify her people.
The queen's husband, Philip, whom she loved almost fierce-
ly, cared nothing for her, and on receiving his European in-
heritance from his father (1556) had quitted England, where
he was thoroughly detested. Mary's most fervent prayer
had been that she might bear a son who should maintain the
Catholic cause; she was childless and hopelessly diseased.
The pope, whom she wished heartily to serve, would not be
pacified without money and the restoration of the Church
lands. The portion that remained in the possession of the
crown she did restore, but to reclaim from her powerful sub-
jects their lands would have been to stir up a rebellion in
which all that she had gained for Rome would be swept
away forever. Gardiner, her best adviser, was dead, and
Cardinal Pole, his successor, was deemed a heretic by Pope
Paul IV. and stripped of his churchly honors.
Philip yielded once to his wife's desire for his return.
His stay was brief, and only added misfortunes. She prom-
188 An Outline History of England.
ised aid for his French campaigns, and sent the earl of Pem-
broke over with 10,000 men, who assisted in the capture of
the town of St. Quentin. But the English were too weak to
defend even their own. Calais, the last remnant of the En-
glish empire on the Continent, was taken by the French in
January, 1558. "It was the chiefest jewel of the realm,"
said Mary. But wretched administration at home had left
her without means to undertake its recapture. Its loss was
not a serious blow to England, but it shamed the queen to
lose territory which had been English for so many years.
"When I die you will find Calais written on my heart,"
was one of the pitiful outbursts of the closing months of
her life. Her body spent with sickness, her spirit bruised by
her terrible disappointments, with scarcely a friend in the
world, poor Queen Mary died November 17, 1558.
Elizabeth Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne
Boleyn, immediately succeeded her half-sister Mary. From
1558 until 1603 she was queen of England. Woman as she
was she was no puppet-queen; she chose her ministers with
remarkable sagacity, and with no less wisdom she took part
in their councils, and gave her opinion upon Aveighty matters
of State. In her father's time her vigorous health and brill-
iant mind had made her, though but a girl, a favorite at
court. During the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary she had
held aloof from religious and political controversies, devoting
herself with unusual energy to serious study of ancient and
modern languages and to archery, horsemanship, and the
chase — the sports of young men of her own age.
This busy student of Greek was likewise a woman of the
world ; fond of the pomp of courts, coveting finery, having
gowns by the hundred in her wardrobe, and with all her per-
sonal vanity craving the flattery of her courtiers. She had the*
stature and shoulders of her burly father, the voice of a man,
and a coarse manner of speech which was not then deemed
so unladylike as it would be now. She never married, and
The Later Tudors. 189
though her favorites were many, and she took small pains to
conceal her fondness for them, her adoring people called her
"the virgin queen." Elizabeth's character was peculiarly
adapted for the situation which confronted her when she as-
cended the throne, and which faced her during the first thirty
years of her reign. She was a hard, cold, intellectual woman,
devoid of strong attachments and prejudices, shrewd of dis-
cernment, and full of tact in devising and applying policies.
It would seem impossible for an English monarch of any other
stamp to have piloted the kingdom through the perils which
beset it at Queen Mary's death.
Elizabeth was accepted as queen without openly expressed
dissent in any quarter of her realm. But this circumstance
gave no augury for the future. Although there was no En-
glish rival for the crown, the outlook, both in England and
on the Continent, boded a stormy reign. Mary's popish policy,
with the bitter persecutions into which it had carried her,
had not exterminated Protestantism, but it had aroused a
lively hatred between the partisans of the old and the re-
formed religion.
The new queen could not readily join either religious party
without giving offense. Under her Protestant brother, Ed-
ward, Elizabeth had accepted the forty-two articles of Cran-
mer, and at Mary's accession she had with as little difficulty
conformed to the Catholic service. For herself she had no
vital sympathy with either, and it was her aim to continue
the moderate system which her father had established. On
one point, however, her mind was made up: the Church of
England, Catholic or Protestant, must be united. Circum-
stances which the imperious queen vainly tried to control
forced her more and more to the side of the reformers, and
she was obliged to make changes in her father's creed ; and
the most tyrannical measures of her reign were those by
which she strove to force the reformed doctrines and usages
upon her reluctant subjects.
190 Ax Outline History of England.
The key-note of Elizabeth's purpose was struck by the re-
peal of the laws which had established the Catholic religion
and lighted the fires of persecution. The Church's independ-
ence of the pope was re-asserted, and all priests were ordered to
conform to the new rules. The prayer-book of King Edward
and Cranmer was revised and made the common book of de-
votion. Parker, a man of her own conservative views, was
made Archbishop of Canterbury. Under his direction relig-
ious matters settled themselves peacefully, or would have
done so had it not been for the religious condition of Europe.
Philip II. of Spain, whose marriage with Mary had thrown
England into a paroxysm of fear, had inherited the possessions
of his father, Charles V., and become the strongest monarch
of his time. He was king of Spain, and afterward of Portu-
gal, of Italy and the Netherlands, and the precious metals
and rich merchandise of India, Africa, and America supplied
his treasury. On sea and land the Spanish forces were the
most formidable in Europe, and a succession of able generals
directed their movements. The king, who exercised absolute
power over this vast realm, was a bigoted Romanist, the chosen
champion of papistry. The Church was reviving from the
shock of the Lutheran attack. The limits of Protestant ter-
ritory were now pretty well defined, and they have scarcely
been altered since. Northern Germany, the Scandinavian
countries, Holland, and to a certain degree England and
Scotland, no longer looked to the pope for guidance. There
had been Protestants in Italy, but Philip's hand was there
upheld by the Inquisition, and the " heresy " vanished before
him.
A new fervor inspired the priests and princes of Catholi-
cism. The " Society of Jesus," better known as " Jesuits,"
founded by Loyola, devoted itself with a complete consecra-
tion, unmatched since the early days of the Church,' to the
task of redeeming the world from heresy. In the Spanish
Netherlands the iconoclasm of the Protestants, followers of
The Later Tudors. 191
John Calvin of Geneva, went to such extremes that Philip
was obliged to send an army against them. France, which
ranked next to Spain among Catholic lands, was weakened
by the incompetence of its king, and by the religious wars
upon the French Protestants, or Huguenots, as they were
called. The Catholics of Scotland, few in numbers but ably
led, could count upon the support of France, at whose court
their queen, Mary Stuart, had lived from her infancy.
The circumstances above narrated determined Elizabeth's
course. She could not be a Catholic, for no English Catholic
would recognize her, Anne Boleyn's daughter, as the lawful
successor of Mary Tudor. Philip offered her his hand in
the hope of impressing England into the troop of Catholic
countries which he had united to the Spanish crown. She
put him oft* for a year, and then denied him — her people had
had enough of Spanish marriages. Then he sought a po-
litical alliance with her until he might take by force what
he might not win by favor. But France feared his am-
bition, and France, too, sought an alliance with the queen.
Catherine de Medici, the queen-mother, offered her first one
prince and then another (Anjou and Alencon) in marriage,
but Elizabeth, after puzzling coquetry, rejected both, for a
league with Catholic France was almost as threatening to
the peace of England as would have been a connection with
Spain.
Still another arrangement was possible. William Cecil,
Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth's secretary of state and most trusted
adviser, favored an open war. He wanted England to rally
all the Protestant states and factions, and as their champion
take up the gauntlet that Philip had thrown down. But the
frugal queen startled the council with the rough cry, " No
war, no war! my Lords! " She preferred diplomacy and
cunning. Through the confusion of the time the queen's
eye saw England's need of peace, and she determined to post-
pone as long as possible the inevitable war. Meanwhile, she
192 An Outline History of England.
stealthily sent aid to the Presbyterian lords of Scotland, who
were struggling against a French regency, shrewdly hindered
Philip in his war against the Dutch, and afforded scanty sus-
tenance to the Huguenots. So long as she could keep the
Catholics of Spain, France, and Scotland from joining hands
against her, she was safe, but the task demanded all her
ingenuity. Of all her perils that from the north was the
most menacing.
Mary Stuart was the grandchild of Margaret, the elder
sister of Henry VIII., who had married James IV., King of
Scotland. Henry had striven to unite his son Prince Ed-
ward with the baby-queen, but neither he nor Somerset, who
succeeded to his policy, could compel the Scots to carry out
the marriage treaty. Mary's mother was a French princess,
and the vigorous French party in Scotland took the little girl
to Paris and educated her at the French court. She married
a prince, who held the scepter for a single year (1559-1560),
as King Francis II. of France. Mary was a sincere Catholic,
and she was in the control of Catholics who laughed at
Elizabeth Tudor's title to the English crown. They argued
that the divorce from Catherine and the Boleyn marriage
were alike unlawful, and that Mary Stuart, and not Eliza-
abeth Tudor, was the rightful heir. The French courtiers
addressed Mary as " Queen of England."
At the death of Francis his beautiful widow, then in her
twentieth year, quitted France to cast her fortunes with her
Scottish countrymen (1561). At her coming a new crop
of perils sprang up about Elizabeth. The personal charm of
Mary — a wonderful mingling of beauty, courage, and intel-
lect — united the factious Scots in her support. They be-
lieved her promise to allow both forms of worship, and they
stood by her in her demand for recognition as the successor
of the unwedded Elizabeth. The English queen dared not
admit the claim, for the prospect of another "Mary the
Catholic " would have endangered her own safety. Neither
The Later Tudors. 193
dared she select any successor, nor give hopes of a succession
by marrying one of her many suitors. For England's sake
she must remain unmarried and let her hand be used as a
king-piece in the deep game of statecraft which she played.
Mary Stuart's presence in Scotland, looking south, brought
trouble for the English Catholics, who had hitherto suffered
little for their religion. A number of bishops and a few
score of parish priests had left their cathedrals and churches,
rather than adopt the book of common prayer and the other
adjuncts of the reformed service, but most of the clergy had
accepted the changes without demur. In 1562, however,
when Mary's plans seemed to augur success, and the Catholic
prospects brightened, the pope lent his aid to increase Eliza-
beth's perplexities. Unwilling as yet to pronounce her sen-
tence of excommunication and deposition, he tried gentler
means. He forbade Catholics to attend any church in which
the prayer-book was used (1562). Parliament first fined
all who refused to attend, and in 1563 passed the "Test Act,"
which compelled all persons holding office in Church or State
to swear to obey the queen rather than the pope. At the
same time the forty-two articles of Cranmer's creed were
cut down to the "thirty-nine articles," which, with slight
revision, still remain the English standard of belief. Thus
Elizabeth had been forced from the ground on which her
father stood to the advanced position of Edward.
Mary Stuart caught a new inspiration from the news of
Catholic oppression in England. She had not asserted her
own religion in Scotland, but she now gained strength w^ith
English papists by marrying her cousin Henry Stuart, Lord
Darnley, who, next to Mary herself, was the presumptive
heir of Elizabeth. The fruit of their union was the boy
James Stuart, who eventually united on his own head the
crowns of the two kingdoms. His birth brought fresh
anxieties to Elizabeth, while it doubled the courage of
the Catholics.
9
194 An Outline History of England.
But Mary proceeded toward her aim with suicidal
recklessness. Her husband, Darnley, a vile fellow at best,
had won her loathing by murdering, in her own palace, one
David Rizzio, an Italian, in whom she trusted much. Before
the next year closed the house in which her husband slept
was blown to pieces with gunpowder, and Darnley's body
was found near the ruins. " Black " Bothwell, for whom she
had a guilty love, was accused of the murder, and many be-
lieved that Mary was not innocent. Bothwell's trial was a
farce, and his marriage with the queen, which followed close-
ly upon his acquittal, ended their career in Scotland. A na-
tional uprising drove Bothwell from the kingdom. Mary
was deposed and imprisoned at Lochleven, and her babe was
crowned as James VI. of Scotland, with her half-brother,
James Douglas, the Protestant earl of Murray, regent.
After a few months she fled from her captors, and would
have renewed the struggle, but was outwitted by Murray's
vigilance. By an act which proved her genius she turned,
and entered England (May, 1568), not with an army, but
as a queen in distress, seeking to be restored to her Scottish
throne.
What to do with the Queen of Scots was the question
which puzzled the English government for nineteen years to
come. The regent Murray was gladly rid of her, and re-
fused to take her back unless she would submit to trial for
murder and adultery. This she declined to do, and England
could not force a Catholic sovereign upon a country so
thoroughly Protestant as Scotland had become under the
fierce preaching of John Knox and the Calvinists. Mary
next demanded safe conduct to the Continent. But from
France or Spain she would have plotted with advantage
against England. At that very moment the duke of Alva,
a general of Philip of Spain, was massacring the Protestants
of the Low Countries with a merciless zeal which has left
his deeds the standard with which such acts of horror are
The Later Tudors. 195
compared. His presence gave hope to the English Catholics,
menaced the Huguenots, and challenged English Protestants
to succor their suffering brothers in the faith. Elizabeth
could do nothing with safety, and she did nothing whatever.
She would not give up Mary for Scottish trial, nor try her in
England, nor conduct her into France, nor set her on her
throne, nor admit her right, or that of her son, to succeed to
the throne of England. She shut her up in Bolton castle
and held her a prisoner.
Conspiracies soon came to light among the Catholic nobles
of England, who found the royal captive a personal center for
their plots. The pope launched his most terrible weapon, the
Bull of Deposition (1569), absolving Elizabeth's subjects from
their obedience. In 1570 the duke of Norfolk, who had
previously proposed marriage with the Queen of Scots as
the prelude to a papist rising, became involved in a new
plot: Philip II. was to send 10,000 men of Alva's army to
aid in putting Mary in Elizabeth's seat. This conspiracy,
known from the name of its agent as " Ridolfi's Plot," was
discovered by Lord Burleigh's detectives. Its English
accomplices were arrested, and Norfolk was beheaded (June,
1572).
As the excommunication inspired Elizabeth's enemies,
it aroused her also to more stringent measures against all
persons refusing to worship in the legal manner. These
recusants were of two classes. Besides the Romanists, who
objected to the reforms in the service, there were the Puri-
tans, who complained that the reform stopped too soon. They
accepted the teachings of John Calvin and the extreme
Protestants and were dissatisfied because the English Church
retained the rule of bishops, the surplice for the priests, and
relics of the Roman ritual. These people did not wish to
withdraw from the communion, but they were clamorously
in favor of purifying the Church of which they remained a
part. For their efforts in this direction they got the derisive
196 An Outline History of England.
nickname "Puritans." Puritans and Catholics were alike
excluded from Elizabeth's scheme of uniformity, and the
Court of High Commission, which she created in 1583 to try
ecclesiastical causes, soon had its docket crowded.
Punishment by fines and imprisonment failed to check
Puritanism. Toward the close of the reign it advanced a
stage farther, and the extreme Puritans stayed away from
church altogether, worshiping by themselves out of doors,
and in dwellings, barns or warehouses. They were called
Separatists and Independents, and some of these sects gained
peculiar names or denominations, as the "Brownists," who fol-
lowed the Congregational teachings of one Robert Brown.
While the rise of new sects showed activity in one
school of religious thought, the work of the Jesuits in En-
gland exhibited the zeal of the opposing party. The Catholic
leaders perceived that their religion must eventually lose its
hold upon the mind and heart of the common people, for the
old priests were with few exceptions conforming to the re-
formed order or being displaced by Anglican clergymen.
The universities had come so thoroughly under Protestant
influence that they no longer recruited the priesthood. Ac-
cordingly zealous English Catholics founded a school at
Douay on the continent — another was soon planted at Rome
— for the training of Englishmen to preach the Catholic re-
ligion in the island. These "seminary priests" were men of
unusual, even fanatical, enthusiasm for the work to which
they devoted their lives.
It was declared treasonable to land or shelter the new
teachers. Parsons and Campian were the first Jesuits to
brave the law (1580). They traveled in disguise, preached
in secret, and did effectively reclaim Catholics of high and
low degree who would otherwise have drifted into con-
formity. The strict enforcement of the laws against them
deterred them no more than Mary's burnings had dismayed
the Protestants. Campian died a traitor's death, and several
The Later Tudors. 197
hundred priests and teachers suffered a like fate, and were
revered as martyrs, even as their persecutors reverenced
Latimer and Ridley and the other stout-hearted victims of
Smithfield and Oxford lires.
After the death of Norfolk Elizabeth had respite for a
brief time. Her cousin Mary remained in custody, still proud
and hopeful, renouncing none of her claims, and still the hope
of all Catholics who yearned for the liberation of England.
Strange news came from the Continent. A dozen dangerous
years had passed and Elizabeth had until now staved off the
necessity of answering that hard question of a royal mar-
riage. Neither France nor Spain could yet free its hands
from home affairs long enough to deal out to England the
chastisement which the pope had ordered. France, after a
long struggle with her Huguenots, had given them peace,
and raised Coligny, their hero, to a hii^h place in the gov-
ernment. In 1562 the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day
had renewed the war, by the slaughter of from 25,000 to
100,000 French Protestants. In the Netherlands Alva had
made the land sweat blood and gold until, in 1572, the Dutch
of both religions under William of Orange ("the Silent")
united to gain their independence. Thus both France and
Spain were plunged into new wars, while England throve in
consequence of the turmoil abroad.
As the nation grew in wealth and in unity it was swept
by new enthusiasms. The cheap books which had followed
the invention of printing, the resultant mental awakening,
the penetrating force of the Reformation which stirred all
men to their depths, all these were bearing fruit in a gen-
eration of brilliant Englishmen. Great exploits were re-
warded at Elizabeth's court, and among her courtiers were
many doers of great deeds. Although there was no open war
with Spain there was the bitterest hatred and the overhang-
ing certainty that, once freed from its entanglements in Hol-
land, the whole force of the Spanish monarchy would descend
198 An Outline History of England.
upon the Protestant island. This was enough for the young
Englishmen, who could not sit quietly at their school-books
while the " sea beggars " of Holland were harassing the
Spanish galleons. Philip's possessions in America were so
wealthy and so vast that they formed a rich and defenseless
prey for English buccaneers. They plundered the cities of
the SpanisTi main, captured the treasure-ships, darted into
Spanish harbors and cut out rich prizes under the guns of
frowning forts. Sir Francis Drake, one of the boldest of
these lawless sailors, had faced worse perils than Philip's
gibbet. His was the first English ship in the Pacific Ocean,
and his little vessel was the first to make the long voyage
around the world. Men of like daring were Davis and
Frobisher, who explored the icy channels of America in vain
quest for a " north-west passage " to India. John Hawkins,
slave-trader, was another, and one of the queen's favorites.
The depredations of men like Drake hastened the out-
break of war with Spain. The queen accepted the inevit-
able. The Netherlander were fainting in their struggle
against the strongest State in Europe. William, their hero,
was dead — killed by an assassin (1584), and France and
Philip had formed the "League" (1585), to keep the
Huguenot, Henry of Navarre, from the French throne, and
to put an end to Dutch Protestantism. The union of the
two Catholic countries terminated England's neutrality.
However reluctant to risk the fortunes of war, the
instinct of self-preservation, which had maintained a nominal
peace for nearly thirty years, now prompted the queen to
vigorous action. Two kingdoms would turn upon England
the moment their bloody work in Holland was completed.
Before the end of the year 6,000 English troops landed in
the Low Countries under command of Robert Dudley,
earl of Leicester, the handsome but worthless courtier to
whom Elizabeth showed favor. But the gay man of courts
fared ill against Philip's general, Alexander, Duke of Parma.
The Later Tudors. 199
Town after town was taken by the Spaniards, and after the
defeat of Zutphen, Leicester came home in disgrace. On
the field of Zutphen fell that pure and courteous knight, Sir
Philip Sidney.
Every east wind which brought ships across the channel
bore tidings of danger to Elizabeth. Her succors had
not helped the Hollanders; Henry of Navarre, to whom she
paid a begrudged subsidy, could scarcely hold his own against
the League; and there was rumor, and unmistakable evi-
dence, too, of new conspiracies among the Catholic refugees
upon the Continent. Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen's
secretary, scrutinized this news searchingly; his spies were
every where, and little escaped his vision. There were con-
spiracies and conspiracies, but the center of each, willingly
or unwillingly, was the royal prisoner, Mary Stuart.
In 1556 the threads of a Catholic plot, of which one
Anthony Babington held the English end, were found and
followed up. Yet Walsingham gave no sign until the evi-
dence of Mary's guilt was complete. Babington was appre-
hended and executed; but Elizabeth hesitated to do violence
to her Scottish prisoner. Due regard for her own safety left
no alternative. A special court tried, condemned, and sen-
tenced the Queen of Scots for treasonable connection with
Babington's plot " for the hurt, death, and destruction of
the royal person." Even then, although she had signed the
death warrant, Elizabeth would not order its execution,
leaving that duty to her secretary. On February 8, 1587,
Mary Stuart was beheaded in the court of Fotheringay
castle, bequeathing to Philip of Spain her enmity to Eliza-
beth and her claims to the English crown.
Philip was ready to move. For months his fleets had been
building and assembling for the conquest of England and
the Netherlands. Drake, plunging into Cadiz (1587), put
back the preparations, and, as the rough sailor said, " gave the
Spanish king's beard a singe." But in 1588 the League had
200 An Outline History of England.
won a notable triumph over the Huguenots, and the duke of
Parma had arranged matters in the Spanish Netherlands so
that he, with 17,000 men, could be spared for heavy work in
England. In May, 1588, "the most fortunate and invin-
cible Armada " — so the Spaniards named their fleet — set sail
on its double errand of invasion and conversion. The pope
gave his blessing to the expedition as heaven's chosen instru-
ment for the chastisement and redemption of the apostate
realm. The duke of Medina-Sidonia commanded the ar-
mament, which was thus made up: " 132 ships, manned by
8,766 sailors and 2,088 galley-slaves, and carrying 21,555
soldiers, as well as 300 monks and inquisitors."
The navy of England numbered 34 vessels, most of them
light and lightly armed. But volunteers, who had proved
their ability in storm and sea-fight, soon swelled the fleet of
the admiral, Lord Howard, to more than twice that number.
With him were Drake, Frobisher, Hawkins, and other hearts
of oak, who were not unused to meeting Spaniards on the
high seas. These gathered in Plymouth Sound to await the
cautious enemy. At Tilbury fort the English volunteers,
Catholic and Protestant and Puritan, mustered in throng-
ing companies, and flung their caps in the air when Elizabeth
Tudor rode among them, and with a few queenly words
exhorted them to resist the foreigner : "Inra come among
you, resolved in the midst and heat of battle to live or die
among you all. I know that I have the body but of a weak
and feeble woman, but I have the heart of a king, and of a
king of England too ! "
On Friday, July 19, the Armada was sighted off the Lizard,
and on Saturday Howard went out, not to meet but to follow
the foe. Until July 27 the Englishmen hung upon the flanks
and rear of the great crescent-shaped Spanish fleet, attacking
straggling or disabled vessels and maneuvering for delay.
On the 28th, at midnight, eight English fire ships bore down
upon the Spanish vessels crowded in Calais roads. In the con-
The Later Tudors. 201
fusion which ensued Lord Howard gave battle. All day Mon-
day, the 29th, the English, reinforced by new arrivals, fought
for their queen, their country, their religion. When their
powder was almost gone the " invincible Armada " gave up
the battle and steered northward with a fair south wind.
Howard gave chase for several days; a great storm com-
pleted the destruction. The coasts of Norway, Scotland,
and Ireland were strewn with wreckage, for the Spaniards,
cut off from retreat through Dover Strait*, made the home-
ward voyage around Great Britain. In October Philip's
shattered fleet dropped anchor in the harbors whence it had
sailed in pomp five months before. Fourscore vessels and
20,000 men who sailed with the armada never came
back. "I sent them forth," said the phlegmatic king,
"against man, not against the ocean," and he thanked God
for the power to send a larger armament. England returned
heart-felt thanks to God for her deliverance.
Philip's attacks on England were ended. His far-reaching
plans remained unfulfilled. England now struck back at
Spain. In 1589 Norris and Drake descended upon Corunna
with a fleet and army; their small success was followed by a
failure to take the city of Lisbon. With this fleet went
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who, but twenty-two years
old, had succeeded Leicester, lately dead (1588), in the favor
of the maiden queen. Despite this useless expedition priva-
teers continued to play havoc with Spanish commerce.
While Philip's authority upon the seas declined he saw his
other plans collapse. The popularity and finally the apos-
tasy of Henry of Navarre to Catholicism gave him the
crown of France as Henry IV., and shut out Spanish influ-
ence. The death of the duke of Parma left the Netherlands
unpacified, and so they continued until 1607, when their
freedom was acknowledged. Philip himself was then nine
years dead. He had died in 1598, at the age of seventy-one.
The dispersion of the Armadi lifted a cloud that had
9*
202 An Outline History of England.
hung over England for a quarter of a century. The undis-
puted power of Spain was broken. Protestant England took
her place among the leading nations of the world. The
sagacity, the patience, the diplomacy, and finally the courage,
of Elizabeth, Burleigh, Bacon, and Walsingham had foiled
the domestic plots of the Catholics, had postponed and in
the end repulsed the onslaught of Catholic Spain. Relieved
of" her fears England sprang forward with an exultant bound.
Men were eager for opportunities to win renown for their
country and their queen. Essex, the new favorite, captured
the Spanish port of Cadiz in the last years of Philip. Raleigh
pounced upon one of the Azores Islands, and Elizabeth sent
him to jail for the affront to her pet commander.
Ireland rose in revolt. This kingdom, long divided and
chaotic, had found a point of union. The English Parlia-
ment had established by law the Protestant religion in Ireland.
The Irish were absolutely opposed to the new faith, and
the attempt to force it upon them pressed them into a com-
pact nation. The corrective measures of England failed ut-
terly. The colonies of Englishmen, who were settled upon
confiscated lands, formed communities separated from their
Irish neighbors by a fierce hatred. Spain aided, and the pope
blessed, every insurrection of the Catholic Irish. Essex, who
was Elizabeth's choice for every arduous task, was sent to quell
the revolt of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. His failure led
to his disgrace at court, and his audacious attempts to save his
head aroused the wrath of the aged queen. She approved the
sentence of treason which was passed upon him, and he was
executed February 25, 1601. Lord Mount joy, who suc-
ceeded him in Ireland, firmly but mercilessly crushed the
rebellion, and established English laws, language, and cus-
toms at the point of the sword.
The position of Parliament in Elizabeth's reign is worthy
of mention. She did not neglect it altogether, as most of her
Tudor predecessors had done, but it did not often oppose her.
The Later Tudors. 203
Her Test Act excluded the Catholic members, who might
have formed an obstructive force, and the common danger of
queen and nation, and the prevalent belief that her
policy was the best for all, doubtless smoothed her path.
Moreover, her thrift and her love of peace spared her those
constant appeals for money which always aroused the op-
position of the people. Yet the national spirit, which grew
with the successes of Elizabeth, asserted itself in the House
of Commons. A part of the royal revenues was derived
from monopolies of salt, wines, and other commodities. By
patent from the sovereign the sole right to deal in these
articles was granted to individuals or corporations, con-
ditioned upon the payment of a " royalty" to the government.
These taxes became so oppressive that in 1601 the Commons
indignantly protested, and the queen gracefully yielded to
them and revoked her patents.
, Many charters for trade in America and in Asia were
granted during this reign, and on the last day of the fifteenth
century an association of London merchants was chartered
as the East India Company, the corporation which con-
quered, and for a time controlled, the British Indian Empire.
In the last years of her life the famous queen became fret-
ful and nervous; she who had known no fear kept a sword
continually in her chamber, and at times thrust it through
the hangings in quest of a concealed assassin. The counselors
who had stood with her through the perilous passage died
one by one in the years of triumph. Robert Cecil, son of
the good Lord Burleigh, became her chief secretary, and he
it was who told, from the signs which she made on her death-
bed, that she would have as her successor James VI., King
of Scotland, the son of her enemy, Mary Stuart. Elizabeth
Tudor died at Richmond, March 24, 1603, in the seventieth
year of her age.
The reign of " Good Queen Bess " is reckoned the golden
age of England. In the galaxy of great names which shine
204 Ax Outline History of England.
upon its records, and amid the glories of its close, one is likely
to forget the trials, the long-drawn suspense, of its first thirty
years. Had space allowed this chapter might have been ex-
tended with the literary history of this Elizabethan period.
In his dramas Shakespeare exemplified the spirit of his
time, and he makes his character, John of Gaunt, say of the
England of Henry V. what every patriot thought of the En-
gland of Elizabeth :
" This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, derai-paradise ;
This fastness built by nature for hereelf
Against infection, and the hand of war ;
This happy breed of men, this little world ;
This precious stone, set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall.
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands.
The Stuart Tyranny. 205
CHAPTER XII.
THE STUART TYRANNY. 1603 A. D.-1649 A. D.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I. TO THE EXECUTION' OF CHARLES I.
By the will of Henry VIII. Elizabeth's successor was to be
taken from the family of his younger sister, the Duchess of
Suffolk; but at Elizabeth's death the late king's wishes were
disregarded, and the royal council proclaimed the king of
Scotland king of England also.
James I. (James VI. of Scotland) was the only son of Mary
Stuart and that Lord Darnley whose murder drove her from
her kingdom. In his earliest childhood James Stuart had
been titular king of Scots, and for a number of years he had
been the real ruler of the northern kingdom. His Catholic
mother had no voice in his education, which was thoroughly
Protestant. Weak and ungainly physically, idle, and slovenly
in manner, the king had a mind of considerable keenness. He
was especially learned in theology — " the wisest fool in Chris-
tendom," sneered Henry of Navarre — and was inordinately
proud of his acquirements. A man of such parts — physical
cowardice was a marked feature of his character, and a Scotch
brogue marred his speech — cut a sorry figure in the eyes of
the English people, which had been filled for fourscore years
with the kingly figures of "bluff king Hal," and "good
queen Bess."
The Puritan agitation was the first subject which was
brought to King James's attention. As he passed southward
toward London (1603), the "Millenary Petition," signed by
1,000 Puritan pastors (in reality only 800), was offered to
him. It urged him to revise the doctrines and rules of the
20G Ax Outline History of England.
English Church so as to purify the ecclesiastical system from
the lingering taint of Romanism. It will be remembered
that the reformers of Edward VI. 's reign — Cranmer and his
supporters — were the high officers of the Church, enlightened
men, who introduced changes more rapidly than the com-
mon people were ready to receive them. Hence the Catholic
reaction under Mary had been easy. During the long reign
of Elizabeth, two generations had lived. The Bible had be-
come the one household book in thousands of families, and
its influence had contributed to an enormous growth of the
Puritans. The situation of Edward's reign was now reversed.
The bishops, appointed by the crown, were conservative,
pledged to maintain the established Church, and subject to
rebuke and sharp discipline if lenient toward the Puritans;
the people, on the other hand, with many of the lesser clergy,
were strongly Puritanical, and to King James they came
with their petition.
The petitioners had their trouble and something worse for
their pains. In 1604 the king summoned four Puritans to a
conference at Hampton Court with eighteen prelates of the
Church. This famous conference refused the reforms for
which the petitioners prayed; and the king, after a savage de-
nunciation of Presbyterian government (a bitter taste of which
he brought from home), ordered the bishops to compel their
clergy to conform strictly to the rules of the Church. Star
Chamber court declared that signers of the great petition were
guilty of misdemeanor, and ten of them were imprisoned.
Three hundred Puritan preachers were expelled from their
livings for failing to obey the rules at which their consciences
rebelled. The measures against the "Independents" — those
extreme Puritans who, despairing of reform within the
Church, had Left it altogether — drove some of them out of the
country, and one of these little bands of refugees, having so-
journed a time in Holland, took ship in the 31ayflo>cer in
1620, to found a new England with "freedom to worship
The Stuart Tyranny. 207
God." The translation of the Bible, King James's version,
was authorized by the Hampton Court conference and pub-
lished in 1611.
The first Parliament of the reign assembled in March 1604,
and its sessions marked the beginning of a new era. The
dearest dogma of this theorizing monarch was " the divine
right of the king to rule." He had declared his views upon
this subject in Scotland, and he lost no opportunity to impress
them upon his English subjects. He denied that the nation
was the source of law and of kingly power. His authority,
he declared, was from heaven, and his prerogative was above
the law, which he might of his own will alter as the welfare
of his people required. This was " Divine Right of Kings,"
a novel theory, and one which the nation would not tolerate.
Its continued re-assertion, and the tyrannies that sprang from
its practical application, led to a life-long struggle between
the king and Parliament ; a struggle which the former be-
queathed to his son and successor, and which ended in the
execution of King Charles I. and the establishment of the
English commonwealth.
A spirit of resolute independence was evident in the first
Parliament of James. He asked it to sanction a close union
of England and Scotland, which had now separate govern-
ments under the same king. This they refused, and the king,
in turn, slighted their wish to concede the Puritan demands
for reform. The first session of Parliament closed fruitlessly.
The session of 1605 narrowdy missed a tragic opening.
James had promised to relieve the Catholics of the heaviest
burdens with which Elizabeth's reiem had weighted them,
but his ear soon caught whispers of Catholic plots against
him and he broke his promises. Another and a more deadly
conspiracy was hatched in 1605. Robert Catesby and a few
desperate papists planned to blow up the Parliament build-
ings on the day of the joint assembly of the two Houses to
hear the king's opening speech. The cellar of the building
208 An Outline History of England.
was stocked with gunpowder, and all plans were in readi-
ness to massacre in a moment king, princes, lords, and com-
mons. Guy Fawkes, an Englishman who had served in the
Spanish army, had charge of the details of the murderous
project. November 5 was the day for the king to meet
the two Houses; but the secret transpired at the last moment.
On the evening of November 4 Fawkes was arrested among
his powder kegs; the other conspirators incontinently fled.
Fawkes and others were executed, and November 5, the day
of the " Gunpowder Treason," was long celebrated by English
Protestants.
The question of crown revenues, for which Elizabeth's
thrift had found ready solution, kept her successor in con-
tinual trouble. His expensive household, his pensions, and his
foreign diplomacy used up vast sums. The only lawful way by
which an English king could raise money was by taxation
voted by the representatives of the people in Parliament.
James had found Parliament a two-edged sword, which he
feared to handle. Without asking its consent he accordingly
laid a tax, or "imposition," upon currants and tobacco. One
Bate, an importer of currants, refused to pay, and was tried
before the Court of Exchequer. The judges gave the startling
opinion that the king, as regulator of commerce and foreign
affairs, might lawfully lay and collect such customs duties.
This angered Parliament. In 1610 James offered to relin-
quish certain feudal rights of the crown, in return for an
annual grant of £200,000. But the haggling over this
* Great Contract" disgusted both parties, and the king dis-
solved Parliament, hoping to pay his way by means of the
hated impositions. But the way was hard, and after footing
it for three years he summoned a second Parliament in 1614.
The Commons refused to grant a farthing until the king
should redress their grievances by renouncing the impositions
and purifying the Church. After the deadlock had lasted a
month James ordered the Commons to go home, whereupon
The Stuart Tyranny. 209
the "Addled Parliament" dissolved without enacting a
single law. Among the participants in that stormy session
were John Eliot and Thomas Wentworth, memorable names
in the history of the constitutional struggle of the following
reign. Their first lesson in Parliamentary opposition was
brief, and they did not soon learn a second ; seven years
elapsed before the king's third Parliament was summoned.
Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, and son of that Baron
Burleigh who had given Elizabeth a life of faithful service,
was the first adviser of the king, and the only real minister
that James tolerated. Lord Bacon, his chancellor, gave his
advice unheeded. After Cecil's death James cultivated
favorites in the place of counselors. The first was a page of
the court, one Robert Carr, a young Scot, who had neither
ability nor character. James made him his companion and
private secretary, loaded him with wealth and honors, and
created him earl of Somerset. Within the space of two years
Somerset ruined himself by his misconduct. The king's par-
don saved his life, but another young man, George Yilliers,
better known by his later title, duke of Buckingham, had
gained the favor of the king. His wealth soon surpassed
that of his predecessor, for the king intrusted to him the
distribution of oftices and peerages, and his purse was stuffed
with enormous bribes. " Steenie," as the king called Buck-
ingham, was a handsome, genial fellow, with fine taste for
art, and very poor morals, whether public or private. The
death of the Prince of Wales left the younger son, Charles,
heir-apparent to the crown, and to him the favorite attached
himself, even more closely than to the father.
Meanwhile James followed his own will in the administra-
tion of the realm. The all-important question of revenue
was variously met. The impositions were increased, but they
proved insufficient. A " benevolence " was asked, but only
a small sum resulted. " Baronets," a new order of nobility,
were created, and patents of this new rank, and seats in the
210 Ax Outline History of England.
House of Lords were sold for ready money. The effort of
the king to interfere with the proceedings of the law courts
was resisted by the chief-justice, Sir Edward Coke, and that
great lawyer was dismissed from the bench (1616). The
lawless extortions of the crown were repeated by the offi-
cials of the court. Buckingham's wealth was the result of
bribery. Judges received no salaries, and a premium was
thus placed upon official corruption. In 1621 Lord Bacon
himself, "the wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind," the
chancellor of the realm, was impeached by the House of
Commons for taking bribes. He acknowledged that he had
received money from suitors, but declared that the payments
had not influenced his decisions. The Lords condemned
him, and he retired from office to devote the remaining years
of his life to the study of philosophy.
The Parliament which condemned Lord Bacon was called
for a very different purpose — one which brings the student to
the perverse foreign policy of the Stuart kings. Elizabeth's
reign had indisputably proved one thing — that England was
the natural leader of Protestant Europe against Spain, the
champion of papistry. The first armed conflict of the two
religions had settled this. France and the Netherlands had
furnished the battle-ground for that struggle. After a genera-
tion a fresh outbreak was imminent, and Germany was to be
the stage of action.
England was Protestant, but the willful king believed that
an alliance with Spain would restrain both countries from the
war, and insure a European peace. To confirm the amity
of the naturally distrustful nations he proposed (1617) that
Prince Charles should wed Isabella, the Spanish infanta.
Before the death of the cautious Cecil Charles's sister Eliza-
beth had married Frederick, the Elector Palatine, the leader
of the German Protestants. James thought the best way to
protect her and her children was to ally himself to Spain, the
leading Catholic State. To this design he sacrificed Sir
The Stuart Tyranny. 211
"Walter Raleigh, whose deeds in South America made him
odious to Spain.
The negotiation of the Spanish marriage proceeded slowly.
The English denounced it, and Spain stipulated that the
English Catholics should worship unmolested. The parley-
ings were disturbed by the clash of arms in Germany.
Bohemia called King James's son-in-law Frederick to its
throne, expelling King Ferdinand, the Catholic relative of
the Spanish king. This revolt opened the Thirty Years'
War (1618-1648). Frederick accepted the offered title, but
maintained his position only a few months. The Catholic
League drove him from Bohemia, and the Spaniards occupied
his home dominions in the Palatinate (1620).
A small force of English volunteers set out to aid the
Elector, with the permission of James, and in 1621 the third
Parliament was summoned to grant supplies for a war in
•Germany. When the Commons found that the king wanted
supplies first, but would give no definite plan of war, their
ardor cooled. They voted a meager sum, but pledged them-
selves to aid the king with their fortunes and their lives if
he would adopt a war policy in earnest. Still he temporized
with Spain, and while the last shreds of his son-in-law's power
were being seized by the Catholics he still swam about the
tempting bait of the Spanish marriage. At its second session
this Parliament of 1621 sent a committee to ask the king to
declare war on Spain. The monarch Avas furious. "Bring
stools for these embassadors," he cried, when the commoners
made known their errand, and he bade them meddle no more
with affairs of State. To this the House entered its Protesta-
tion, solemnly and prayerfully declaring " that the liberties
of Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and
inheritance of the subjects of England, and that the arduous
and urgent affairs concerning the king, state and defense of
the realm, and of the Church of England, and the making
and maintenance of laws and redress of grievances . . . are
212 An Outline History of England.
proper subjects of debate in Parliament." With his own
hand the king tore the Protestation from the journal of the
House, and a few days later ordered the dissolution of his
third Parliament.
The shameful quiescence of England in the presence of the
suffering German Protestant States aroused James to a final
effort to vindicate his foreign policy. In 1623 Buckingham
and Prince Charles set out together for Madrid to bring
about the marriage which had been delayed so long. They
were richly entertained at Madrid, but every obstacle was
placed in the way of the match. The Infanta was averse to
a "heretic" husband, and the Spanish king and the pope
devised all manner of iron-clad oaths to compel King James
to re-open the way for the conversion of England to
Catholicism. Charles promised to fulfill them all, but even
then the marriage was delayed. Thwarted in his design to
bring the Infanta to England as his bride, the prince returned
alone in 1624 and broke off the en^ao-ement.
James despaired of the Spanish alliance and summoned a
fourth Parliament (1624) to prepare for war with Spain in
defense of his daughter Elizabeth. But the Commons were
wary of the king's purposes and chary of supplies ; they
made a small appropriation and then rested to observe the
movements of the king. His heart was fixed upon marry-
ing Charles to a princess who should secure to England a
Catholic ally on the Continent. Urged on by the favorite
Buckingham he selected the Princess Henrietta Maria of
France, and signed a marriage treaty which granted sub-
stantial liberties to English Catholics. With such an
unpopular deed to answer for it was folly to ask Parliament
for money. Buckingham undertook to open hostilities
without an appropriation, but the twelve thousand English-
men who crossed to the Continent for the campaign (1625)
under Count Mansfield were decimated by disease. In the
midst of these disasters James died, March 27, 1625.
The Stuart Tyranny. 213
Charles Stuart immediately succeeded his father as Charles
I. of England. Courtly presence, pleasing address, dignity
of manner, and cultivated tastes combined to recommend
him to the English, who had turned in disgust from the
boorish James. In his household, as in society, Charles was
a polished gentleman, but in his theory of kingly power he
was a tyrant. The principles of absolute authority in which
James believed were inherited by the son, and practiced
with a persistency, which led to war, dethronement, death.
The newly-crowned king revived the hopes of the nation.
His hatred of Spain and zeal for his sister Elizabeth promised
that England should soon resume her place among the Protest-
ant nations. Parliament was summoned, and asked to appro-
priate sums for the prosecution of the war, which Buckingham
had begun with Mansfield's wretched fiasco in Holland. But
a few months had altered the temper of the nation. Two
months before (May, 1625) the king had married the French
princess, Henrietta Maria. It was suspected that the mar-
riage was a prelude to a milder attitude of the government
toward the English Catholics. Until the monarch should
declare his intentions the Commons would not satisfy his
demands. They voted him one sixth of the desired amount;
but the tonnage and poundage duties, heretofore granted for
the lifetime of the sovereign, were assigned to Charles for
one year only. This Parliament was dissolved two months
after its first meeting.
Before a year had passed a second obstinate Parliament
had met and been sent to its homes (February to June, 1626).
The Commons were intractable. Led by Sir John Eliot they
defied the king's claims to absolute power. When he cast
Eliot and Digges into prison their colleagues refused to tran-
sact business until the members were released. They even
voted to impeach Buckingham for his crimes; but before
they could bring the favorite to trial Charles ordered their
dissolution.
214 An Outline History of England.
Two years had passed; two Parliaments had come and
gone without filling the royal purse. The half-hearted war
with Spain was a total failure. To conciliate the Protestants,
the king now broke the pledges of Catholic toleration by
which he now bound himself to France in the marriage
treaty. Cardinal Richelieu was the statesman who directed
the policy of Louis XIII., the French king. Late in 162G war
broke out between the two countries. The independent Hugue-
not sea-port of Rochelle — "proud city of the waters" — was
besieged by the French, and Buckingham's expedition for
its relief (1C27) ended in inglorious defeat. "Since En-
gland was England it had not received so dishonorable a
blow."
The money for the war was raised by a " forced loan "
which was manifestly illegal. Men who refused to con-
tribute were imprisoned without trial. Among them was
John Hampden, a country squire, who said he did not be-
grudge the money, but he dared not incur the curse of Magna
Charta by disobedience of its rules. Five of the prisoners
asked for trial on a writ of habeas corpus, but the servile
judges buttressed the royal power by declaring that it was
the king's to say whether or not men should be tried. This
decision broke another provision of the Great Charter.
One after another the hard-won liberties of the English-
men were being extinguished by the monarch.
The third Parliament of this reign met in March, 1628.
Sir John Eliot, according to whose theory the king was the
servant of Parliament, was its chief orator and most uncom-
promising leader. Sir Thomas Wentworth, keen and prac-
tical, but of aristocratic ideas, stood with Eliot. In the rank
and file of the House were John Hampden, John Pym, Denzil
Holies, and another country squire, a cousin of the "stiff-
necked " Hampden — Oliver Cromwell, of the straitest sect of
the Puritans.
Such earnest men did not wait for another to open the sub-
The Stuart Tyranny. 215
ject which was uppermost in all minds. With zealous care
they drew up a " Petition of Right," reciting the hitherto
acknowledged liberties of the kingdom, and the divers man-
ners in which they had been trampled upon by the House of
Stuarts. Four especially odious acts were specified : the lay-
ing of taxes without consent of Parliament, the billeting of
troops upon private families, the employment of martial law
in time of peace, and the imprisonment of citizens without
specified accusation. Charles was reluctant to accept this
document which proposed to curtail his authority, but he
was in sad financial straits, and his fawning judges told him
that the execution of the parliamentary proposals might
be prevented by the courts. With extensive mental res-
ervations he set his signature to the bill, and received
in compensation an abundant subsidy from his delighted
Commons.
But the Commons followed up their victory by another
assault upon the favorite. " We will perish together,"
said King Charles. But Buckingham fell first. He was at
Portsmouth, superintending the embarkation of the forces
with which he hoped to retrieve his fortunes at Rochelle,
when John Felton, a fanatical lieutenant, incited by motives
of revenge and patriotism, stabbed him to the heart.
While Parliament was training its guns on the throne for
its unlawful taxes and its High Church sympathies, the king
did his best to control its deliberation. The presiding officer,
Speaker Finch, had royal orders — which motions to entertain
and when to adjourn. The Commons grew restive under
this interference. They took counsel over Sunday what to
do. On Monday, March 2, 1629, they met, with their minds
made up. Mr. Speaker had the king's command to adjourn
forthwith, but the House would not adjourn. When Finch
would have left the chair young Holies and another held
him in his seat, swearing " he shall sit there till it please the
House to rise." The doors were hastily barred and Eliot's
216 An Outline History of England.
voice rang out above die tumult. He moved, amid the as-
senting shouts of the Commons, three resolutions, stating
plainly that whoever introduced new religious opinions or
services, whoever advised the levy of unparliamentary taxes,
and whoever voluntarily paid such taxes, was an enemy of
England. A few days later (March 10) this Parliament was
dissolved. Sir John Eliot, Holies, and other actors in that
famous scene were arrested; when Eliot died of consumption
in the Tower (1632) the spiteful king refused his body to his
mourning family.
Three Parliaments had now brought forth only trouble —
the third more than the first — and King Charles concluded
that much unpleasantness might be avoided by having no
more Parliaments in which these irreverent Puritans meddled
with affairs of Church and State. For eleven years, accord-
ingly (1629-1640), the king summoned them no more. Three
men were his main reliance in the period of personal govern-
ment which now opened: Wentworth, Laud, and Weston.
Sir Thomas Wentworth, Eliot's former colleague, had become
a royalist in 1628, and by successive promotions attained the
rank of earl of Strafford. He was president of the Council of
the North, which administered the government of the north-
ern counties, and in civil matters was a royal and faithful
counselor. William Laud was bishop of London, and was a
Churchman of the narrowest type. Within his diocese he
allowed no deviation from the established rules, and when
(1633) his elevation to the archbishopric of Canterbury made
all England his parish he enforced the laws of conformity
mercilessly upon the Puritans. Weston, the Lord Treasurer,
played a subordinate part, though it was his financial ability,
the fertility and audacity of his invention which furnished
the means by which the unparliamentary rule was supported.
To save expense he persuaded his master to make peace with
both France and Spain (1630).
"Thorough" was Strafford's name for his system of ad-
The Stuart Tyranny. 217
ministration. A definite purpose — to achieve good govern-
ment by strengthening the power of the king — ruled all his
movements, and in Laud he found a willing and efficient co-
adjutor. Together they set about the administration of
Church and State in such high-handed fashion that, between
tax-gathers and clergy, the Puritans had no peace. In 1629
the Massachusetts Bay Colony was chartered by a company
of Englishmen in quest of religious liberty. Salem and
Boston were founded in the following year. The tide of em-
igration ebbed and flowed in sympathy with the vigor or re-
laxation of Wentworth and Laud, but it never entirely
ceased, and within a dozen years from the issue of the char-
ter, 20,000 English Puritans left the mother country for the
New England wilderness.
The problem of revenue was of all the most immediate and
puzzling. The illegal tonnage and poundage customs fur-
nished a portion ; extensive monopolies of commodities fed
another financial stream; land-holders were knighted and
made to pay for the enforced honor; obsolete feudal fines and
dues to the crown were revived and collected; Catholics paid
well for staying away from church. The court of Star
Chamber, wherein the king's judges and counselors gave
judgment without jury, was the treasurer's instrument of
oppression in the.se matters.
The need of a fleet to protect commerce put a new idea
into the heads of the king's ministers. An ancient practice
of commanding the maritime counties to furnish ships for
the navy was revived. The next year (1636) it was ex-
tended. The inland counties as well were ordered to pay a
new tax, " ship-money," to be used in furnishing forth the
fleet. Servile judges pronounced the levy legitimate, and the
government thought that deliverance from its hardships had
dawned at last. If this tax were lawful why summon another
Parliament? John Hampden, of Buckinghamshire, com-
prehended the importance of the principle, and almost alone
10
218 An Outline History of England.
took stand against it. He was not a poor man, but he would
not pay the twenty shillings of ship-money which the royal
commissioners levied on him (1637). Try him they might
before the royal Exchequer Court, and convict him they did
(163S), but not until the nation had gained courage from the
knowledge that one patriot had not bowed his neck to the
scepter. Hampden was applauded; his slavish judges were
reviled. But the new shackles which the ship-money decision
placed upon English freemen increased the numbers who
longed for rest. A ro}^al j)rohibition checked the emigration
to New England.
What the Star Chamber court was to the civil government
the court of High Commission was to Archbishop Laud in
his zeal for the Church. Not uniform opinions, but outward
conformity to the Church laws, was his aim, and in
attaining it he was as thorough as Strafford could wish.
For the numerous body of thoughtful Puritan Englishmen,
whose conscience rebelled at the capes, the robes, the cross-
ings, bowings, and kneelings of the Church service, Laud
had neither sympathy nor mercy. "With absolute intoler-
ance he drove Puritan ministers from their pulpits, forced
the established worship upon unwilling congregations, mak-
ing it even more outrageous to Calvinists by innovations
which, in their sensitive nostrils, savored of ever-dreaded
Rome. " Dr. Alabaster preached flat popery," said young Mr.
Cromwell to the Commons. Not only were non-conformist
preachers cast out, but laymen suffered for lapses in morals
and attacks upon the clergy. William Prynne, a banister
with a caustic pen, had his ears cut off for a libelous writing,
ITistriomastix, condemning the theater. Other men, who
condemned the Church for its loose Sabbath-keeping and its
tendency toward papistry, stood in the pillory, or sat in
the stocks, while the common people stood by pitying ; for
the roughest work which Laud might do could not, at short
notice, shake Puritan England from its settled beliefs.
The Stuart Tyranny. 219
In 1636 King Charles, who was also king of Scotland,
gave Archbishop Laud permission to carry his measures of
reform across the border, and bring the Scottish Kirk into
uniformity with the Church of England. The Kirk had been
modeled by John Knox and his fellow-Calvinists upon strict
Presbyterian principles, and the general assembly, which
made laws for the Church, was the head of an organization
more powerful than the civil constitution of the realm.
Andrew Melville, a successor of Knox, had wounded the
vanity of King James by telling him that in the Scottish
Kirk his majesty was " not a king, nor a lord, nor a head,
but only a member." Little wonder that James was charmed
by contrast with the subservience of the English bishops.
He upheld the Church of England against the Puritans, for
fear that Puritanism would lead to Presbyterianism. The
bishops he valued as a main reliance of his theory of abso-
lute power, and in 1610 he forced upon the Scottish Kirk an
anomalous system, bishops being appointed to preside in the
Presbyterian synods. James had a wholesome fear of his
canny countrymen, and he rejected Laud's early schemes to
complete the re-organization of the Scottish church establish-
ment. "He does not know the stomach of that people," was
James Stuart's comment on the bishop's plan.
Charles was less of a Scot, and knew less of the Scottish
tenacity, or he would have been satisfied with his father's
progress. He let Laud place the full control of the Kirk in
the hands of the bishops, and force upon the Presbyterian
preachers a liturgy based upon the English book of common
prayer. The Scots stopped their ears rather than listen to the
new service. Jenny Geddes flung her stool at the head of the
bishop who held service at St. Giles's kirk, Edinburgh (July
23, 1637), and the riotous congregation yelled "A pape, a
pape ! " and " Stane him ! " It was impossible to read the
service-book there or elsewhere.
The king raged, but the Scots organized committees — " the
220 An Outline History of England.
Tables" — who, on February 28, 1638, formed the Solemn
League and Covenant to recover and maintain the purity
and liberty of the Gospel. To regain his slipping grasp
upon his ancestral kingdom Charles sent the marquis of
Hamilton to Edinburgh with concessions. A general assem-
bly of the Kirk was to be held, and the service-book with-
drawn. The assembly met at Glasgow, November, 1638,
but Hamilton was powerless to deal with it. In defiance of
him and his master, the Scottish bishops were deposed, and
the whole system of Presbyterianism was re-established as it
had been thirty years before.
The overthrow of the royal and episcopal authority in
Scotland was a serious reverse for the policy of Thorough.
"With John Hampden's resistance before them, and the suc-
cessful revolt of the Scottish Presbyterians for an example, the
English Puritans might rise against the king — Parliament or
no Parliament. Obviously the only consistent course for
Charles and his archbishop was to crush the Scottish rebell-
ion by force. Money was scraped together in odd ways for
the. first "Bishops' War" (1639), and an army marched
toward Scotland. Peace was patched up without a battle
by the "Pacification of Dunse ;" but the Scots refused to
id; eat from the course which had been determined in the
general assembly of Glasgow. The king knew not what to
do next, and the earl of Strafford hastened from Ireland to
give him counsel.
Strafford had been sent to Ireland in 1633 as governor
(Lord Deputy), and had set up in that distracted kingdom
the policy of Thorough which was his prescription for all
political ills. With supreme confidence in himself and in his
own wisdom he decided what would be best for the Irish; then
he went to work to effect that result, using indifferently any
method — persuasion, cajoling, bribery, force — which would
bring him most quickly to his destination. Thus he estab-
lished order in Ireland, introduced the culture of flax and
The Stuart Tyranny. 221
the linen trade, summoned an Irish Parliament, and with it
maintained a small standing army. In fact he exhibited on
a small scale the absolutism of which Charles so fondly
dreamed. It was from this successful labor that he was re-
called to England in 1639.
His advice was to summon Parliament. It may be that
his experience with Irishmen had effaced his memories of
English temper. Perhaps he turned to Parliament as the
king's only hope at the present crisis. Letters had been in-
tercepted which showed that Scotland and France were
drawing together; possibly Strafford trusted in this disclos-
ure to work the nation to the pitch of voting the money
which must be had if Scotland were not to be lost. What-
ever motives may have moved the king, this much is certain:
a Parliament met at Westminster, April 13, 1640, and, heed-
less of the intercepted letters, immediately demanded the
re'dress of grievances as a prelude to the passage of the
supply bills. Evidently nothing was to be done with such
advisers, and on May 5, 1640, the "Short Parliament" was
dissolved.
Spurred on by Went worth and Laud the king renewed
hostilities with Scotland — the second Bishops' War — but
his untrained army fled from the field at Newburn. The
Scots now demanded terras of pence and settlement, and
their army encamped on English soil, prepared to march on
to London to extort a treaty. Charles shrank from another
conflict with the Commons; the Lords had been less insolent,
perhaps they would help him now. A council of peers met
in September, but their only recommendation Avas to sum-
mon Parliament. He could do no other. The Scottish army
was only held in its camp by his promise to pay £850 a
day until a permanent settlement should be reached, and
without Parliament he surely could not raise that amount of
money. Writs of election were accordingly issued, and roy-
alist and commoner plunged into the electoral battle.
222 An Outline History of England.
John Hampden, the ship-money hero, rode through the
country with John Pym, who had grown gray in resistance to
the Stuart pretensions, arousing the people to their oppor-
tunity to fling off" the tyranny of the crown. The king's men
were beaten every-where, and the men who met at West-
minster on the third of November, 1640, came with resolute
purpose not to separate without placing eifective curb upon
the royal power. Pym and Hampden were there — the former
the leader of the Commons, its orator, its controlling spirit;
the silent Cromwell was there from Cambridge town; young
Holies, who had held Mr. Speaker in his great chair and been
in prison for it, was there, with Lucius Carey and Edward
Hyde, who, in the troublesome times ensuing, chose the king's
side, and quitted Parliament, the one to become Lord Falk-
land and perish in the civil wars, the other to figure as Lord
Clarendon and write a ponderous royalist history of what
seemed to him " Rebellion." All these and live hundred
others were of that House of Commons, the most famous or
infamous — according to the point of view — that ever sat in
England. This was the "Long Parliament," which through
many vicissitudes and adjournments, expulsions and restora-
tions, existed until March 16, 1660 ; twenty years lacking eight
months.
All that Charles desired of Parliament w r as to furnish
money to pay the Scottish army its £850 per diem, and equip
an army of Englishmen. But Parliament required more from
the king. It wanted to settle forever the matters of arbi-
trary imprisonments, of unauthorized taxation, and of Laud's
ecclesiastical innovations. It was in the main Puritan, with
an infusion of Independent members. The overhanging pres-
ence of the Scots in the north gave to Parliament a power
over the king which was pushed to the utmost extent. The
Scots would stay until the stipend should be paid. Instead
of paying the Commons put the thumb-screws on the king.
On the eighth day of the session they impeached the earl of
The Stuart Tyranny. 223
Strafford of high treason, and a few days later Archbishop
Laud was imprisoned on the same accusation. In an im-
peachment trial the House of Lords sat as judges. Treason
was crime against the king and the Lords objected to con-
demning the king's best friend on such a charge ; so the ac-
cusers hastily changed their plans and, relinquishing the
trial, pushed a bill of attainder through both Houses. Charles
wept like a child when the bill which was aimed at the life
of his faithful supporter " as a public enemy " was given him
to sign; but he signed it, and the great earl, who had trusted
in his ability to establish the absolute supremacy of his mon-
arch over Parliament and nation, was executed on May 12,
1641. " Put not your trust in princes," were among the last
words of this aristocrat, who had put no trust in the people.
The purpose of the Parliament-men was to tie the hands of
the monarch until they should secure for the country the
reforms which he had denied, or faithlessly promised. In
February, 1641, they compelled his assent to the Triennial
Act, providing that Parliament should meet every three
years, whether summoned by the crown or not. There were to
be no more eleven-year periods of personal rule. Two months
later he consented, under pressure, to an enactment that
the Parliament then in session should be neither adjourned
nor dissolved without its own consent. The day of " addled "
and "short" Parliaments was over; the one now in session
was both brainy and protracted. Assured of their continu-
ance in power, the Commons struck out boldly. Tonnage
and poundage taxes were condemned, ship-money was pro-
nounced unlawful, the courts of Star Chamber and High
Commission by which the king had been able to cloak his
tyranny with the robe of the law were abolished. This work
done, the Scots were paid off and peace restored between the
two kingdoms (August, 1641). Scotland remained Presby-
terian, while England was trying to purify its Church of the
Laudian innovations.
224 Ax Outline History of England.
Of its own free-will Parliament dispersed for an autumnal
recess of six weeks, leaving a committee of each House to
watch for developments. Pym was chairman of the Com-
mons committee. His name was first in all that the Com-
mons did; the Royalists, who were much grieved at these
doings, ridiculed the plain name of the man, and scoffed at
his authority. "King Pym" they called him, and indeed
Charles Stuart was less royal by nature than this John Pym,
Commoner. Parliament re-assembled October 20, 1641, in a
nervous condition. Charles had been in Scotland, and had
made the country scarcely knew what bargain with the duke
of Argyle, the head of the Scotch Presbyterians.
In November horrible tidings came from Ireland. Order
disappeared when Strafford's strong hand was withdrawn, and
now the Roman Catholics, excited by the loss of their lands
and by English injustice to themselves and their ancestors,
rose in savage insurrection and massacred the Protestant
population of Ulster — strong men, defenseless women, and
helpless children. The king did not seem sufficiently shocked
at the news, and wicked men insinuated that he had caused
the revolt that he might obtain from Parliament an army.
With an army he might perhaps disperse other enemies be-
sides Irish rebels. However, no troops were granted to him;
on the contrary, the Commons drew up, after serious debate,
a Grand Remonstrance — 206 articles lon^ — relating the un-
lawful acts of the reign. The majority for it was small,
and an old story has it that Mr. Cromwell was heard to say
as he left the hall, that "if the Remonstrance had not passed
he would have sold all and gone to New England."
This paper, printed and read in every English parish,
molded opinion in support of its authors. The king paid it
little heed; he had conceded much under stress of circum-
stances, but his belief in the justice and legality of his
own coarse was unshaken, and he still meant to recover
the ground from which his enemies had driven him, The
The Stuart Tyranny. 225
Church organization had been attacked at the spring ses-
sion, when the Commons had made an unsuccessful attempt
to oust the bishops from the House of Lords, where they
acted with the royalist majority. In December an unguard-
ed act of the bishops themselves enabled the Commons to
imprison them. This was followed by a law depriving them
of their seats in the upper House.
January 4, 1642, was one of the memorable days of the
session. The king's patience was at an end. Against
Lord Kimbolton and four Commoners, " King " Pym, " ship-
money " Hampden, Holies and Strode, was raised royal accu-
sation of treasonable correspondence with Scotland. Charles
kissed Queen Henrietta Maria good-bye, and went to West-
minster with five hundred men to arrest the five. "The
birds were flown " — to use his .own surprised expression —
when he entered the House, and their colleagues deafened
the ears of their royal master as he retired with cries of
" privilege," " privilege," meaning that they considered his
act a breach of their privilege as legislators.
On the 10th of January Charles quitted his palace of
Whitehall for the north of England, where he was safer
than in the Puritan capital. He could only return at the
head of an army; the queen crossed to Holland to pawn the
crown-jewels for artillery and small arms. Both sides now
saw far enough into the future to perceive the inevitable con-
flict, and each party set about strengthening itself. The Roy-
alists in the two Houses, to the number of ninety-seven, left
their places and joined the king at York. Since Parliament
could no longer obtain the royal assent to its enactments,
it decided that such approval was needless. " Ordinances "
was the name given to these unapproved laws.
On June 2 nineteen propositions were submitted by the
Commons to the king. They required him to surrender to Par-
liament the control of the militia, the possession of forts and
arsenals, the reformation of the Church, the appointment of
226 An Outline History of England.
the royal ministers. " No surrender " was the royal policy;
the propositions were rejected, whereupon Parliament as-
sumed control of the militia, made the earl of Essex its chief
commander, and selected a committee of public safety to un-
dertake the defense. For his part Charles raised the royal
standard at Nottingham (August 22, 1642). Before the close
of the summer the armies of the rival powers, king and Par-
liament, were ready for action. The civil war had begun.
The fighting of the first year of the war went against the
Parliamentary armies. Their soldiers were the peasantry
and the city rabble, while the cavalry, the pride of the royal
camp, was composed of gentlemen of spirit, well armed, well
feci, and mounted on thoroughbred hunters. Prince Rupert,
son of James Stuart's daughter, Elizabeth of Bohemia, was
the dashing leader of these cavaliers, and he made short work
of the " round-head " trained bands, as the short-haired
Puritans were called by the curled fops of Charles's court.
The first battle, at Edgehill, Oct. 23, 1642, was indecisive, but
the royalists marched on London, and only the bold front of
London trained-bands kept them out of the city. Neither
party ventured upon pitched battles; the northern, western,
and midland counties were steadfastly royalist. The coun-
ties of the south and east bound themselves in associations to
support the Parliamentary cause. Oliver Cromwell, now a
colonel of horse, was a leading spirit in the eastern associa-
tion.
Throughout the second year of the war the Royalists
gained ground. Essex proved slow and inefficient. Some-
thing ailed the Parliament's troops ; Colonel Cromwell told
Hampden that they were 'prentices and tapsters, sure to run
from the high-spirited gentlemen who opposed them. If he
had his way he would oppose these men of honor with sober
men of religion. Patriot Hampden fell (June, 1643) in fight,
but cousin Cromwell put his theory into practice. His reg-
iment of horse, "Ironsides," becomes noted for its religious
The Stuart Tyranny. 227
zeal. The men pray before battle, and never retreat. "Truly
they were never beaten at all," said their leader.
Parliament was not inactive, whatever may be said of its
armies. A Puritan assembly, in session by its side at West-
minster since July 1, 1643, was considering the reform of
the Church; the bishops had joined the king, and affairs
ecclesiastical were in utter disorganization. To the Presby-
terianism of Scotland Pym turned for example and aid. In
return for military assistance against the king, Parliament
promised to take the Covenant by which the Scots had estab-
lished their own Kirk. On September 25, 1643, 25 peers and
288 of the commons signed the "Solemn League and Cov-
enant," binding the government to make the religion of the
three kingdoms uniform in faith and worship. Thus Pres-
byterianism was established in place of Episcopalianism as
the State religion of England, and 2,000 Church of England
clergyman left their pulpits rather than accept the Cove-
nant which was now offered every-where as a test of loyalty
to the Parliament. An executive committee of Scottish and
English was charged with the conduct of the war. This
alliance drove the king to a base resort: he made league
with the Irish rebels, red-handed from the massacres of
Ulster.
The death of Pym in December saddened but did not
dismay his party. In January Alexander Leslie, with the
Scots, forded the Tweed. Fairfax and Waller scattered the
Irish contingent before it could be of service to the king.
Toward night-fall on the 2d of July, 1644, Prince Rupert,
whose brilliant- and rapid movements had thus far made him
the most notable royalist figure in the war, attacked the al-
lies on Marston Moor, in Yorkshire. The Scotch quailed
before the fury of his charge, but Cromwell's steady Iron-
sides outmatched the cavaliers and chased them from the
field. The north of England, with York and Newcastle,
surrendered to the Parliamentary leaders. In the south, how-
228 An Outline History of England.
ever, the lumbering Essex scarcely held his ground; in Corn-
wall his infantry was captured by the king.
In the fall and winter the royalists of the Scottish High-
lands, under the vigorous lead of the marquis of Montrose,
and aided by a contingent from Ireland, harried, burned, and
killed in the Lowlands, in the hope that Leslie's army would
withdraw from England to defend its homes. In October,
Charles again marched on London, but was repulsed at New-
bury. Cromwell thought that repulse was not enough; such
an army as he would construct would have made short work
of the king. He complained to Parliament that the generals
were "afraid to conquer;" and he was right. The major-
ity of Parliament wished to force Charles to resume the
throne and govern as a Presbyterian sovereign, with proper
checks and limitations upon his authority. They did not
wish to kill him, or "to beat him too badly." For these
half-way measures Cromwell had no use. He proposed a
sweeping military reform, a new-modeling of the army on the
Ironside plan.
The withdrawal of the royalists and the acceptance of the
Covenant had left Parliament almost unanimously Presby-
terian. Archbishop Laud had been executed for treason
(January 1645), and the Church of England liturgy had been
replaced by a simpler service like that of the Scottish Kirk.
From 1643 to 164S an Assembly of Divines sat at Westmin-
ster establishing a creed, a liturgy, and a system of Church
government for English Presbyterians. In April, 1645, Pres-
byterianism was by law established the religion of England,
and it was the purpose of Parliament to compel the nation
to conform to it by measures as stringent as those of Laud
himself.
Cromwell's plans of military reform were adopted in
April, 1645. By a "self-denying ordinance" all members of
Parliament — except Cromwell, now deemed indispensable —
were removed from military command. Sir Thomas Fairfax
The Stuart Tyeanxy. 229
succeeded Essex as captain-general, with Colonel Cromwell
for his lieutenant. The entire force was reorganized on the
plans of the famous regiment of horse. " Honest men of re-
ligion, whose heart was in the cause," were its commissioned
officers, whether they were draymen, butchers, or gentle-
men of family and fortune. So far as possible the same
principles were carried into the rank and file, and when the
"New Model," as the force was called, took the field, the
king's gay troopers faced the most remarkable military body
that had ever mustered in England. Prayer-meetings, psalm-
singings, sermons, and exhortations were the avocations of
these men, among whom was one dreamy lad, John Bunyan,
and others whom the world has not forgotten.
While the New Model was mustering and drilling, and
the Parliament wavered between war and peace, the royalists
caught glimpses of success. They saw their enemies
divided and the army a mass of raw recruits under new
officers. Montrose wrote from Scotland that he should
soon be able to send re-enforcements. In February, 1G46,
the king had obstinately refused to come to terms with
Parliament ; in June he took the offensive and attacked the
New Model at Naseby (June 14, 1645). Cromwell com-
manded the cavalry that day and surpassed his feats at
Marston Moor. Officers and soldiers no longer feared to
conquer. The raw troops routed the king's men, captured
camp, royal papers, artillery, and two thirds of the army.
The civil Avar was over. The defeat of Montrose at Philip-
haugh, September 13, destroyed the royalist party in Scot-
land, and on March 26, 1646, the soldiers of Parliament won
the last battle at Stow.
The defeat of the royalists left two parties in the kingdom- —
Parliament and the New Model. The former was bent uj^on
forcing Presbyterianism upon the nation. The latter, in
which the Independents were influential, demanded that the
toleration of all Protestant sects should form part of any
230 An Outline History of England.
settlement which should be made with the king. In May,
1646, Charles gave himself up to the Scottish Presbyterian
army, which was still encamped in the north. He did not
realize that he was conquered, and believed that the differ-
ence of opinion between the Parliament and army would
divide his enemy and make his triumph possible. The
agreement which Parliament asked him to sign provided for
his restoration to the throne, but placed the militia under
the command of Parliament for tAventy years, and sanctioned
the Presbyterian form of worship for the English Church.
This suited neither the king nor the army, who desired
toleration for persons outside the Established Church. For
the sum of £400,000 the Scots surrendered Charles to Parlia-
ment and marched home (January 30, 1647).
Feeling between the New Model and the Presbyterians
grew more intense. The party of the Independents in
Parliament had gained strength by new elections which filled
the places of absent royalists, and the majority feared for
their supremacy. The army, which was determined to secure
the religious liberties for which it had fought, defied the
order of Parliament to disband. Cromwell, accused of in-
citing mutiny, fled from the wrath of the Commons to the
camp. Cornet Joyce, with a detachment of the New Model,
seized the ill-guarded king at Holmby House (June, 1647).
All parties now negotiated with Charles, and his sense of his
own importance was inordinately increased. He heard them
all, pretended to favor each, but was sincere with none. On
November 11, 1647, he escaped to the Isle of Wight, where
he signed a secret treaty with Scotland. The Scots were
rabidly Presbyterian, and resolute to force the same system
upon England, in spite of the liberal ideas of the New Model.
Charles promised to aid them in return for armed assistance.
In January, 1648, the kingdom was again at war. The
royalists rose in half the counties ; the Presbyterians in
Parliament vehemently opposed the Cromwellian army, and
The Stuart Tyranny. 231
a Scottish force prepared to invade England. Cromwell put
down the royalist revolt, and Parliament, having declared
the Independents heretical and blasphemous, re-opened its
treaties with Charles. The Scotch invasion under the duke
of Hamilton was met and hurled back by Cromwell in a three
days' fight at Preston Pans, August 17 to 19, 1648. Fairfax
reduced the south to submission. The army again seized the
king, and giving up all compromise marched upon London.
Having determined with prayerful deliberation what course
to pursue, Cromwell, now supreme in the New Model, let no
weak scruples block his path. On the sixth and seventh days
of December, 1648, the Commons, on entering their hall, had
to pass by Colonel Pride, whose soldiers arrested at his orders
the members whom he pointed out. " Pride's Purge " cost
Parliament its Presbyterian majority. The remnant — " the
Rump " its enemies called it — comprised some sixty Inde-
pendent members, who continued to exercise the authority
of a full Parliament, executing promptly the will of the
council of officers which Cromwell directed. A special
tribunal of one hundred and thirty-five persons — the High
Court of Justice— was set up to try the charges against the
king. The House of Lords declining to participate the
Commons declared themselves the sole legislature of the
realm. Men shrank from the impending act. Barely half
the commissioners took part in the trial. Charles made no
defense beyond declaring that the court had no jurisdiction
over him. But the court was satisfied of its authority. Sen-
tence of death was passed upon him January 27, and on the
30th the misguided Charles Stuart was beheaded at White-
hall. Upon the Commons' order it was proclaimed in every
English town and county, " that whosoever shall proclaim a
new king, Charles Second or any other, without authority of
Parliament, in this nation of England, shall be a traitor and
suffer death." And here, thought many, England had for-
ever done with kimrs.
232 An Outline History of England.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE RESTORATION.
1649 A. D.-1685A. D.
FROM THE EXECUTION OF CHARLES I. TO THE DEATH OF CHARLKS II.
For eleven years (1649-1660) there was no king in En-
gland, and no settled form of government. Episcopalian
and Presbyterian royalists desired a king of the House of
Stuart; other Presbyterians and Puritans stood for Parlia-
ment and a republic; the many sects who constituted the
army would have no king, nor any republic in which their
ideas should not be tolerated.
Cromwell, whom the struggle had raised to the command
of the army and the chief power, w'as for the establishment
of a constitutional government in which the executive power
should be under legislative checks, and which should grant
toleration for differences of religious belief.
The Lower House of the Long Parliament, bereft of its
royalist members, purged of its Presbyterians, and by its own
act freed from the House of Lords, was, at the king's death (Jan-
uary, 1649) the poor representative of constitutional govern-
ment in England. About fifty members, dubbed the " Rump,"
took part in its deliberations, and established a council of
State, of forty-one members (three judges, three army officers,
five peers, and thirty members of the House of Commons,
under presidency of Bradshaw, chief of the commission which
ha<l condemned the king). England was proclaimed a Com-
monwealth and Free State without king or House of Lords.
Imminent dangers threatened the Commonwealth. Crom-
well's relentless energy crushed a dangerous mutiny of
"Levelers" in the army, and reformed the discipline.
The Commonwealth and the Restoration. 233
Charles Stuart, the late king's eldest son, was safe in Holland,
where his sister, the Princess Mary, was wife of the chief
magistrate, William of Orange. A large party in Scotland
urged him to claim his own. Ireland, which had never yet
been punished for the massacres of 1641, was thoroughly
royalist, and its ruler, the marquis of Ormond, urged young
Charles to come thither for support. There was need of
prompt action, and Cromwell was chosen to perform it. As
general of the Commonwealth he landed in Ireland in Aug-
gust, 1649. In September the royalists in Drogheda rejected
his terms of surrender, and he took the town by storm, grant-
ing no quarter to the soldiers. Barely thirty escaped alive.
Wexford garrison took no warning by the fate of Drogheda,
and its capture was followed by a like scene of blood. In his
reports to Parliament Cromwell said of these horrors, "I am
persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon
these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in
so much innocent blood " [the Ulster massacres]; " and that it
will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future."
They had the desired effect ; after nine months, stay in Ire-
land, the commander safely ventured to leave the Irish
command to his lieutenant and son-in-law, Ireton, under whom
and his successor, Ludlow, the island was reduced to order
(1649-52). The "order" was secured by seizing royalist
estates in three fourths of Ireland, and planting great bodies of
Scotch and English colonists upon the confiscated lands.
The material prosperity of the country was thereby increased,
but the line between Protestant and Catholic was more sharp-
ly drawn than ever, and the Irish peasant added the name of
Cromwell to his roll of hated Saxons.
In midsummer of 1650 Cromwell, now captain-general of
the army, invaded Scotland. In June young Charles Stuart
landed in the northern kingdom. He took the Covenant, and
promised to rule the nation as a Presbyterian king.
A large army prepared to repel the English invasion, but
234 An Outline History of England.
Leslie, its general, followed the wary policy of the Roman
Fabius. To save his men from starvation Cromwell turned
back toward England. Leslie followed, and gaining the
heights of Dunbar blocked all routes of advance or retreat.
Cromwell seemed lost, but the eagerness of the Scots placed
victory in his hands. At dawn of September 3, 1650, the
enemy descended to the valley, and as they came down the
Puritan army, chanting a psalm of David, scattered them in
utter ruin. Edinburgh and Glasgow surrendered; but while
Cromwell was busy in the north, Charles II. was formally
crowned at Scone, and plunged into the heart of England at
the head of an army (July, 1051). Cromwell gave chase. On
September 3, the anniversary of Dunbar, he routed the royal-
ists and Scots under the walls of Worcester. The entire
invading force fell into the hands of the Commonwealth.
The king fled this way and that from Cromwell's troopers,
hiding in an oak tree as they rode under, riding away in
servant's dress with a gentle-woman, Jane Lane, on the
pillion, and after strange adventures crossing the Channel
in a Brighton collier.
" It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy," wrote the
Puritan general to Parliament of Worcester fight, and hence-
forward September 3, the day of Dunbar and Worcester,
was his "fortunate day." And crowning mercy it was.
Cromwell fought no more battles. His subordinates, Monk
and Deane, restored order and English authority in Scotland,
and he busied himself more and more with the civil govern-
ment. The Hump Parliament, through the Council of State,
was ruling England, and in the hands of a few vigorous spirits
like Sir Harry Vane was endeavoring to strengthen itself to
withstand Cromwell and the army, when the inevitable con-
flict should arise between the two. By Vane's efforts a
strong fleet had been launched in the Channel, and small
causes of offense had been nursed into an open war with
Holland — a war which produced a series of naval battles in
The Commonwealth and the Restoration. 235
the Channel between the English Admiral Blake and Gen-
eral Monk and the brilliant Dutch sea-fighters, Van Tromp
and De Ruyter. The war lasted from July, 1652, until April,
1654, and accomplished nothing of real advantage to either
country.
A settled government and the healing of political wounds
was the constant demand of Cromwell and the army, but the
Rump had its own plans for settlement and healing. The Par-
liament's plan was that the Rump itself should have charge of
the work. It was proposed to call a new Parliament, but the
Rump undertook to pass a bill not only constituting itself a
part of the new body, but making itself judge of the new elec-
tions. Cromwell entered the House as the bill was passing,
interrupted the session, pronounced the Parliament dissolved,
and, with a file of soldiers, drove the members from their
chamber, April 20, 1653. This was the first dissolution of
the Long Parliament of 1640, which had the word of King-
Charles I. that it should not be dissolved without its own
consent. The Couneil of State fell by the same blow.
The Puritan army was now supreme. Cromwell and a
council of officers and civilians hit upon a plan for a new
Parliament. The soldiers believed that they were the espe-
cially chosen servants of God in overthrowing the king and
Parliament. It was now proposed to vest the civil au-
thority in a body of men chosen with main reference to
their godliness. Accordingly between seven and eight score
Puritan gentlemen were summoned by name to this assem-
bly of nominees, called from its numbers the " Little Parlia-
ment," and " Barebones Parliament," from the name of
Praise-God Barebones, one of its worthy members. But the
godly men were the most incapable of legislators, running
after all sorts of Avhimsies and novelties of government.
Cromwell himself was ashamed of them, as he afterward
confessed. " Overturn, overturn," was their whole policy,
he said. In December, greatly to his relief, the common
236 An Outline IIistohy of England.
sense of a large minority led them to resign their power
into his hands, an example soon followed by the majority.
This " Assembly of Nominees," " Barebones Parliament,"
or "Puritan Convention," had named a new Council- of
State, which, in co-operation with the army officers, drew
up a written constitution for the government of the com-
monwealth. This " Instrument of Government " provid-
ed for a chief executive officer called "Lord Protector of
the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland."
Oliver Cromwell was named for this office. He was to
have an executive council of 21, and an army of 30,000 men.
A Parliament of one House of 460 members was to be
chosen triennially, and should have sole power to grant
appropriations of money and lay taxes. Scotland and Ire-
land were to be represented in it, but no active royalist
might sit there. For the nine months which intervened
between the establishment of the Protectorate and the
assembling of this new Parliament, Oliver and his council
governed England with a firm hand. Peace was concluded
with Holland, and the era opened auspiciously. But new
troubles appeared as soon as Parliament met (September 3,
1653). Over one hundred members, declining to obey
the provisions of the " Instrument," were excluded by
Oliver's order, and the others showed a desire to hedge in
and curtail the Protector's authority. The army was left
unpaid and matters which Cromwell had settled were re-
opened. Five months after its first meeting the Protector
dissolved the body, saying bitterly, " It looks as if the lay-
ing grounds for a quarrel had rather been designed than to
give the people settlement."
The Parliamentary apparatus failing to work, the Lord
Protector enjoyed absolute power. The republicans hated
him as a king, the royalists as a usurper of the Stuart throne;
both parties failed in their plots against his life. But
Oliver's rule was a glorious period for England. The great
The Commonwealth and the Restoration. 23?
days of Elizabeth seemed to return. Scotland became or-
derly and at rest. Ireland, whipped into submission, received
thousands of thrifty colonists. The exploits of Blake and
the admirals recalled the daring of Drake and Howard. The
hero of the Dutch wars chastised the Barbary pirates; Vena-
bles and Penn (father of William Penn of American memory)
captured Jamaica from the Spaniards in time of peace ; the
persecuted Vaudois Protestants found safety in the protec-
tion of England. England ranged herself with France (1655)
for war with Spain (1650 to 1659). In this war Blake
twice captured the Spanish treasure fleet, once destroying
it in the harbor of Santa Cruz in the Canary Islands, under
a tremendous fire from ships and forts. The battle of the
Dunes, in June, 1658, gave the town of Dunkirk in the
Spanish Netherlands to England — a recompense for Mary
Tudor's loss of Calais.
' To govern restive England was a more exacting business
than to defeat the Dutch in the Channel, or the Spanish on
the ocean. Royalist risings were frequent, and only the
overpowering might of that splendidly disciplined army kept
the peace. After Penruddock's rising, in March, 1655, the
Protector divided the island into ten military districts, each
commanded by a major-general at the head of an armed
force supported by tithes upon the property of royalists.
Military rule maintained artificial order, and looked into the
morals of men as well. The country was held down by
force proceeding from the minority. In November, 1655, the
Protector was obliged to modify his policy of toleration. The
friends of the king were commonly the friends of the Church.
Accordingly Cromwell forbade public service of the Anglican
Church, and the use of the prayer-book. Priests were banished
from the island. Quakers, Anabaptists and other new sects
were put under restraint — not because of their intolerable
religious opinions, but because men of those opinions were for
royalism, or against the established order of the commonwealth.
238 An Outline History of England.
In September, 1C56, the Protector summoned a second
Parliament under the terms of the Instrument. He had been
governing by major-generals, by ordinances, by an army —
not at all by precedent or constitution. Charles Stuart had
never been half so tyrannical as Oliver Cromwell ; but Oliver
now stood alone between England and anarchy. Yet he had
no desire to be an absolute ruler. His oft-expressed wish was
for the people of England to co-operate for the salvation of
the liberties which the sword had won. His government
failed because the people were unwilling to do their part.
The new Parliament had four hundred members, like the
last. No papists, no "malignant" royalists were eligible.
Even of those elected neraly one hundred were excluded by
the Protector and council because of their violent opinions —
likely to delay the wished-for settlement of the government.
The House, thus purged, soon commenced the revision of the
Instrument of Government, thinking to furnish the nation
with a better constitution. Great changes were introduced in
this "Petition and Advice" in which the recommendations
of Parliament were embodied, and the changes were in the
direction of the earlier constitution. For one House of Par-
liament there should be two — the " Other House " correspond-
ing in indistinct fashion to the House of Lords. The Pro-
tector's authority was to be extended so that he might name
his successor and have a fixed and permanent revenue. His
title was changed to "king." All peaceable Christians
(Romanists and Episcopalians were counted otherwise) were
to be tolerated. After long debate, CromAvell accepted the
amended constitution, excepting the title of king, a name
which exactly fitted his power but was distasteful to the army
and the republicans. On June 26, 1657, he renewed his oath
as Protector with royal splendor in Westminster Hall. No
crown was visible, but the republicans were shocked by the
ceremony, the robe of purple velvet, the gilded Bible, and
the scepter of massy gold.
The Commonwealth and the Restoration. 239
The Parliament re-assembled in January, 1658, the excluded
members being allowed to take their seats, and the new
House of Lords now sitting for the "first time. The Pro-
tector nominated the members of the Upper House, sixty-
three in all. Only six peers of the old Stuart days sat among
them. Tlie others were eminent commoners, major-generals
of the New Model, lawyers, and judges. This Parliament
wasted its time in profitless contentions, and barely two
weeks of it exhausted the Protector's patience. On Feb-
ruary 4, 1658, he called the members together for a final
address. He told them that at their own desire he had
accepted the chief magistracy. " I can say in the presence of
God," he declared, " I would have been glad to have lived
under my woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than
undertaken such a government. But, undertaking it, I did
look that you, who offered it unto me, should make it good."
He charged them with alienating the army, with aiding the
foreign enemy, the king of Scots and his Spanish allies, and
with preventing that oft-sought settlement. " And," he went
on, "if this be the end of your sitting, I do dissolve this Par-
liament, and let God be judge between you and me ! "
These words closed the last recorded speech of Oliver
Cromwell. His health was wasted with the intensity of the
strain which had been upon him for fifteen years. His dear-
est daughter, Elizabeth, died early in August, 1658, and the
loss weakened her father sorely. Two weeks later, the
Quaker, George Fox, notes in his journal that he met the
Protector riding in Hampton Park, and " saw a waft of
death go forth " from him. The next day he was very ill.
On August 24 the doctors had him removed from the palace
of Hampton Court to the late Charles Stuart's royal dwelling
at Whitehall. The news of the approaching calamity brought
Puritan England to its knees and sent up a cloud of prayer
for his recovery. On his death-bed he talked much of re-
ligion, spent much time in prayer. On his " fortunate day,"
240 Ax Outline History of England.
September 3, 1658, the day of Dunbar and the "crowning
mercy" of Worcester, the great Puritan soldier and states-
man was dead.
In his last illness Oliver had named Richard, his eldest
son, as his successor ; and the new Protector was peace-
fully inaugurated. But Richard Cromwell was in no sense
the equal of his father. Worldly and easy-going, having no
important share in the wars and contentions of his genera-
tion, he had no hold upon the Puritans or the army. The
army leaders immediately quarreled with his first Parliament,
compelled the Protector to dissolve it almost immediately,
and then to resign his own office, April, 1659. The constitu-
tion was overturned, and the military power, itself absolved
of wise direction, sought to rule the State. The officers re-
stored (May) the "Rump" of the Long Parliament which
Cromwell had turned out. They found it as jealous of its au-
thority as ever, and in October they forcibly dissolved its ses-
sions. The soldiers themselves now turned against their
commanders, and of their own accord summoned the much-
buffeted remnant of the Long Parliament back to Westmin-
ster in December, 1659.
While the army in London was disgusting all conservative
citizens by its revolutions, the army in Scotland was working
toward another end. The commander there was General Monk,
an excellent Crom wellian officer, but a man devoid of the strong
enthusiasms which swayed most men of that period. With
substantial support from the Scots he entered England, Jan-
uary 1, 1660, and a month later reached the capital. On
February 26, the Presbyterians, who had been purged out of
Parliament by Colonel Pride, were with his sanction re-admit-
ted to their places ; and on March 16, the Rump, now re-
stored to some semblance of the Parliament of 1640, finally
decreed its own dissolution. Monk was in communication
with Charles. On April 25, a new and free Parliament,
called the " Convention," assembled, and at once entertained
The Commonwealth and the Restoration. 241
measures looking toward the recall of the Stuarts. On the
14th, Charles in the Netherlands had issued his Decla-
ration of Breda, offering pardon to his English enemies, se-
curity of property, and tolerance for peaceable religious
sects. The Convention enthusiastically restored the ancient
constitution of king, Lords, and Commons, and urged Charles
Stuart to accept his father's crown. On the twenty-fifth of
May that prince, with a crowd of exiled royalists, landed at
Dover, and his entrance to London was hailed with shouts of
joy. The New Model drawn up at Blackheath gave a cold
welcome to the son of Charles I.; but now that their work
was done, and, to all appearance, undone, they dispersed to
their homes. The Commonwealth was at an end, and En-
gland was again an hereditary monarchy.
Charles II., son of Charles I. and the French princess Hen-
rietta Maria, was thirty years of age in the restoration year,
1'660. The enthusiastic loyalty which hailed his return to
England overlooked his eleven years of exile, and reckoning
his accession from the execution of his father (1G49), counted
the year 1GG0 the twelfth, instead of the first, year of his son.
Charles II. was a Stuart of a new type, witty — " He never
said a foolish thing," said Lord Rochester — and profligate —
" and never did a wise one " ran the same taunting rhyme.
He was handsome, courteous, gay, fond of pleasure in every
form, but he used his courtly graces to corrupt virtue, his
gayety became frivolity, and his love of pleasure lured
him into reckless licentiousness. His palace was a foul nest
of intrigue and flaunting vice. The men and women of the
court vied with their sovereign in brazen defiance of the so-
briety and moral order of the Puritan regime. If the king
had any religion he kept it to himself until the day of his
death, but his mother was a Catholic princess, and his
brother James, Duke of York, who now became lord ad-
miral of the fleet, was of the same faith. It was, then, a cynic
and a skeptic whom the Convention Parliament installed in
11 '
242 An Outline History of England.
the chair of Oliver. For the divine right for which his grand-
father argued and his father died, the new king cared noth-
ing. He was willful, and greedy of power, but he had seen
enough of the spirit of England and suffered enough already
upon that point ; he would press his own policy to the ut-
most, but when he found the nation irrevocably opposed to
him, he was able to revise his plans and save himself from
open conflict. After the perils of Worcester, and the dreary
sojourn in France and Holland, the king was determined to
keep his throne at all sacrifices; in his own careless phrase, he
Avas fully " resolved to go no more on his travels."
The thorough-going loyalty of England in the first years
of the reign relieved the king from the necessity of fulltill-
ing all of the promises of the Declaration of Breda. The
Convention Parliament which General Monk had called sat
through the year 1660, and transacted much business. By
an Act of Indemnity and Oblivion the officers and soldiers of
the Commonwealth were freely pardoned, except certain
commissioners who had condemned Charles I. to death.
Thirteen of these "regicides" or king-killers, were executed,
others were imprisoned for life, while a few escaped to New
England. The lands of royalists which had been confiscated
were left in the hands of their new proprietors. The illegal
taxes of the Stuart despotism — ship-money, monopolies, impo-
sitions, and the like — were not revived. The crown gave up
most of its remaining feudal rights for an annuity. A per-
manent revenue was provided by a grant of £1,200,000
a year for life. The courts of Star Chamber and High
Commission, detested instruments of tyranny in Church and
State, were left in the oblivion to which the Long Parlia-
ment had consigned them. The chief officers of the royal
government — now beginning to be called the cabinet —
represented several parties. Edward Hyde, the friend of
Charles I.. was from 1660 to 1667 the chief adviser of his
son. As earl of Clarendon and chancellor, he endeavored
The Commonwealth and the Restoration. 243
to restore the government as nearly as possible to the old form
of constitutional monarchy. Scotland and Ireland ceased
to send representatives to the English Parliament, and the
union of the three kingdoms was undone (1660), although
the king's authority was supreme in all. A Scottish Parlia-
ment annulled all the acts of the Presbyterian government
since 1632, broke up the church organization, and re-estab-
lished the rule of bishops. Bishops were restored in Ireland
also, and an attempt was made to deprive the Cromwellian col-
onists of their royalist lands. It was only partially success-
ful, but the resistance of Covenanter in Scotland and Crom-
wellian in Ireland enabled the king to support military
forces in those countries which might be of service in such
an emergency as had arisen in 16t2. From his personal reve-
nue Charles supported a few thousand picked troops as the
nucleus of a royal army.
' The Convention was dissolved in December, 1660. It had
been in the Presbyterian interest, had brought back the king,
and commenced a peaceful settlement of the nation. Before
its separation, however, this Parliament disgraced itself by
ordering the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw to
be disinterred and gibbeted at Tyburn. From the Parlia-
ment elected in 1661 no royalist was excluded, and the Com-
mons' House was filled with young cavaliers exultant at the
overthrow of Puritan rule and the restoration of a king.
This " Cavalier Parliament " was as strong for the Episcopal
Church as for the Stuart king, and page on page of the stat-
ute-books was filled with its enactments concerning the re-
ligon of England. The members showed their intentions at
the outset by taking the communion in Episcopalian form,
and ordering the Solemn League and Covenant to be pub-
licly burned by the common hangman.
To cripple the Presbyterian influence where it was strong-
est — in the town corporations — Clarendon secured the assent
of the new Parliament to a series of laws. A Corporation
244 An Outline History of England.
Act restricted town officers to persons who should receive the
Anglican communion, renounce the Covenant, and declare
that it was unlawful to make armed resistance to the king.
Then came the Act of Uniformity, making the use of the old
prayer-book compulsory in all churches ; requiring all min-
isters to assent to its doctrines, and reserving to the bishops
(now restored to their sees) the sole right of ordaining clergy.
The enforcement of this law in August, 1662, drove nearly
two thousand of the ablest ministers in England — Presby-
terian, Independent, Baptist, and other non-conformists — from
their pulpits, among them Richard Baxter, the gifted author
of Saijifs Pest. In 1664, these non-conformists, or dissenters,
as they came to be called, were further persecuted by a
Conventicle Act, forbidding, under the most severe penalties,
gatherings of more than five persons for any religious serv-
ice not contained in the prayer-book. In 1665 the FiYe Mile
Act added to the miseries of the non-conforming clergy.
They were asked to take oath that they would " endeavor no
alteration of Church or State;" those who refused the oath
were forbidden to go within five miles of any town or place
in A\hich they had formerly held services. John Bunyan,
tinker and Baptist exhorter, was sent to jail in 1060
and kept there twelve years for preaching to an unlicensed
congregation. He wrote the Pilgrim* s Progress — the most
popular English book except the Bible — in those years of
confinement. John Milton, who had grown up among the
Puritans, and had held a minor position in Cromwell's gov-
ernment, spent these years in retirement, writing the epic of
Puritanism, the Paradise Lost. The theaters, which the Long
Parliament had closed because of their scandalous plays,
were re-opened with a new form of drama, in which the prof-
ligate life of the court and nobles was blazoned to the world.
Poetry, which Milton had raised to heights sublime, was de-
based and polluted by the verse-makers of corrupt society.
The earl of Clarendon directed the government through
The Commonwealth and the Restoration. 245
these years devoted to church reform and the establishment
of the constitutional monarchy. The Catholic party, grow-
ing in strength with the king, and the Presbyterian party,
gathering power in the Commons, opposed the earl vainly
in the internal affairs of kingdom, but with ultimate success
in his foreign policy. The king, careless of public duty
though he seemed, had a definite foreign policy which he
veiled in secrecy, but never long forsook. His aim was to
re-establish the Roman Catholic Church in England. So
shrewdly were his designs concealed that the nation was
panic-stricken when the discovery was finally made. That
was not early. For ten years the secret was kept inviolate.
The championship of the Catholic religion and of absolute
power in Europe had passed from Spain to France. The
statesmanship of Richelieu and Mazarin had given the
French monarchy unprecedented power, wealth, and military
'strength, and the young king Louis XIV. was able and eager
to extend his sovereignty over Europe. Charles and the
ambitious Louis were cousins, and readily came to an under-
standing. In return for material aid to Louis on the Conti-
nent Charles was to receive French support in setting up the
authority of the pope. The first sign of the project was the
marriage of King Charles with the Portuguese princess
Catharine of Braganza (16G2), a Catholic and a friend of
France. At the same time Charles sold the town of Dunkirk,
Cromwell's conquest, to Louis for £400,000. The popular
indignation which greeted these acts prevented further
progress for a time.
From 1665 to 1667 England and Holland, rivals for the
carrying trade of Europe and the naval supremacy of the
Channel, were again at war. Monk, now Lord Albemarle, and
Prince Rupert, as bold on the sea as in the saddle, commanded
the English fleets in a series of noted battles with the Dutch
admirals De Witt and De Rnyter. The English had taken
New Amsterdam in America from the Dutch in 1664, and when
246 An Outline History of England.
the war closed that colony remained English, under the name
of New York. The loss and gain of territory were slight, but
the national pride of Englishmen was sorely wounded, for the
government so wasted the money intended for the fleet that
repairs were impossible. The Hollanders entered the Thames
unhindered, sailed within twenty miles of London, and
burned docks and shipping. Men sighed for the good old
times of the Protectorate, and told how Oliver had made
foreign nations tremble. In July, 1667, the war, in which
France had taken an insignificant part, Avas closed by the
treaty of Breda.
In the midst of the Dutch war London passed through
two memorable calamities. In April, 1665, the popu-
lous city, poorly paved, closely built, and ill-drained, was
swept by a plague like the Black Death of the fourteenth
century. It is said that one hundred thousand citizens died
of the disease within six months. Close upon its heels came
a second catastrophe. On September 2, 1666, a fire broke
out in the city, and burned unchecked for three days, con-
suming thirteen hundred buildings. Among them was the
great church of St. Paul, afterward rebuilt on the plans of
Sir Christopher Wren. " The Monument " marks the spot
near which the conflagration started. The Plague, the Fire,
and the naval victories of York, Rupert, and Monk over the
Dutch are celebrated by the poet Dryden in his Annus
Mirdbilis (Year Wonderful ).
The disgrace of the Dutch war, and the discomfort of the
people under the persecution of dissenters, heightened the
opposition to Clarendon's administration. Charles was rest-
ive under the constitutional curb which the earl had put
upon him, and hailed" with delight an opportunity to discard
the minister. In August, 1667, he was dismissed from office.
Seven years later he died an exile in France. The cabinet
which followed is known as the " Cabal," from the coinci-
dence betw r een that term and the word formed by the initial
The Commonwealth axd the Restoration. 247
letters of the ministers' names, C-lifford, A-rlington, B-ucking-
ham, A-shley, L-auderdale. The first important act of the
C.ibal placed its members in sympathy with the nation.
Their envoy, Sir William Temple, negotiated with Holland
and Sweden the "Triple Alliance" (January 13, 1668), the
three Protestant powers binding themselves to block Louis
XIV. in his designs against the Spanish possessions. The king
had no sympathy with this act of his ministers, but was him-
self carrying on in secret a friendly correspondence with
Louis. In 1670 he signed the secret "treaty of Dover."
Charles and his brother, York, agreed to profess the Catholic
faith at the proper moment, and meanwhile to join with
France in an attack on Holland. Louis was to pay his royal
ally £200,000 a year during the war.
Charles confided the terms of his engagement with
Louis to only two of his ministers, Clifford and Arling-
ton, both Catholics at heart. The rest of the Cabal went on
in ignorance of* the king's perfidy. By a Declaration of In-
dulgence for dissenters the sovereign won their consent to
the war with Holland (1672-1674). France immediately
burst into the Low Countries, and commenced a career of
conquest which promised the utter extinction of the Dutch
Republic, while the English fleet engaged the Dutch admi-
rals in the Channel. A revolution in the Netherlands raised
William of Orange to the stadtholdership, and breathed a
new spirit of resistance against the French. Ashley (Anthony
Ashley Cooper) was made earl of Shaftesbury and lord
chancellor (November, 1672), and became chief minister
of the king. He was an old statesman of Cromwell's time, a
leader of the Presbyterian party, and an unscrupulous politi-
cian. As yet the secret of Dover treaty was undivulged,
but in 1673 it was noticed with distrust that the king's gen-
erals and admirals were Catholics, and that the soldiers of
Protestant England were being employed to fight the battles
of the French Catholic king. Even the Declaration of Indul-
248 An Outline History of England.
gence was suspected as a mask for Catholic toleration,
and had to be revoked. Parliament had a deep horror of
Catholic supremacy, and now passed a Test Act prescribing
that all persons holding office must take oaths to which no
Romanist could subscribe. Colors had to be shown. The
Catholic James, Duke of York and heir to the throne,
resigned the command of the fleet. Clifford quitted the
Cabal, which fell to pieces, and a new ministry .was organized
upon its ruins. Shaftesbury was deprived of office by the
king himself; but in his place in the House of Lords he ex-
erted his great abilities to compass the confusion of the king's
plans by securing a Protestant successor to the throne.
Sir Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, was the leading min-
ister of the crown from 1673 to the beginning of 1679, and
his sincere desire to increase English influence among the
Protestant States of Europe was again foiled by the trickery
of his master. Danby brought about the marriage of York's
Protestant daughter Mary with William of Orange (1677),
hoping thus to provide a Protestant heir, as well as to bind
together Holland and England (their war had closed in 1674)
against the rapacity of Louis XIV. But Louis again took
Charles into his pay, and while the English Parliament
threatened France and voted supplies for an army the English
king sold his country's honor for a pension. The peace of
Nimeguen, 1678, removed the prospect of war.
The discovery of an alleged conspiracy of Catholics to kill
Charles and massacre Protestants terrified the nation, in
September, 1678. A worthless renegade, Titus Oates, gave in-
formation — now believed to have been perjured, but then re-
ceived as conclusive — which led to the arrest, imprisonment,
and execution of many innocent persons. Shaftesbury seized
upon the popular panic over the " Popish Plot " to push
forward his project of securing a Protestant successor for
Charles. All Catholics w^ere excluded from membership in
Parliament. Danby 's connection with the king's French
The Commonwealth and the Restoration. 249
intrigues was discovered and he was deposed. Shaftesbury
again came to power and the "Long Parliament of the
Restoration" (1661-1679) was finally dissolved.
The Parliament of 1679 had been in session but a few
months when the king dissolved it in order to thwart its
evident purpose to exclude James, Duke of York, from the
succession. Yet its brief existence is notable for the passage
of the Act of Habeas Corpus, confirming one of the most
precious rights of the English subject. By this law judges
were obliged to grant the writ of habeas corpus — summon-
ing a jailer to produce his prisoner in court and declare the
reason of his confinement. It put a stop to illegal imprison-
ment and secured speedy justice to the accused.
The question of the succession was forced to the front by
the increasing age of Charles and the absence of a legitimate
son. His Catholic brother James was next of kin and James's
daughters, Mary, Princess of Orange, and Anne, were Prot-
estants both. Around these the court party formed itself.
Shaftesbury selected the Protestant duke of Monmouth as his
candidate for the succession. Monmouth was a gay and
courtly prince, the eldest of several bastard sons of Charles.
His father had given him command of the army against the
persecuted Covenanters of Scotland, but afterward com-
pelled him to go away from England as York had gone.
Shaftesbury was again put out of office, but he redoubled his
exertions in favor of Monmouth. The fierce party strife
which followed gave the mime of Tory to the party which
battled for the rights of James and his family, and Whig
to the partisans of the Protestant duke. The Exclusion
Bill unfitted Parliament for any other business, and three
times the king dissolved the Houses to prevent its passage.
Shaftesbury was arrested, but made his way to Holland, where
he died in 1683, leaving'the nation to accomplish by revolu-
tion the exclusion for which he had fought.
For four years (1681-1685) Charles was free from discord-
11*
250 An Outline History of England.
ant Parliaments. The pension of Louis XIV. supplied his
ordinary financial necessities, and no war arose to swell
his expenses. The Whig and Tory contest was fought
out unremittingly. James was recalled to favor at court,
and Monmouth was arrested (16S2). In 1683, the Whigs,
having no longer the arm of Parliament to wield, resorted
to force. Monmouth and others were implicated, unjustly,
it is thought, in the Rye House Plot, a plan to murder the
king and his brother at the Rye House on the Newmarket
road. Its disclosure confounded the Whigs. Monmouth
fled to Holland, others were executed. To exterminate the
shattered party whose strength was in the towns, the old
Presbyterian strongholds, Charles deprived borough corpora-
tions of their charters. The new charters gave the crown con-
trol of the boroughs, and so insured the election of royalist
members in case another Parliament should be held.
Death interrupted the plans of the new despotism (Feb-
ruary 6, 1685), and in the supreme moment the wicked life
of the pleasure-loving monarch. Prayers were offered for
the dying voluptuary as they had been offered for the dying
Puritan Cromwell. Deceiver to the last, he never owned his
belief, though a priest of Rome was privately admitted to
his room a few hours before his death. One of his mistresses,
and all but one of his illegitimate offspring, watched about
his bed, heard the last sally of his wit — an apology for being
such a long time dying. Some ears caught his latest whisper,
concerning another of his favorites, Nell Gwyn the actress,
" Do not let poor Nelly starve ! "
The English Revolution. 251
CHAPTER XIV.
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 1685 A. D.— 1714 A. D.
FROM THE ACCESSION OP JAMES II. TO THE DEATH OF QUEEN ANNE.
At the death of Charles II. his brother, the duke of York,
became king of England and Scotland Feb. 1685. James
II. was past fifty and had been in public life for a score of
years. As lord high admiral he had been an efficient
though not a particularly brilliant officer until the Test Act
of 1673 compelled him to confess his conversion to the
Catholic faith. He then resigned and soon left the king-
dom, returning, however, before his brother's death.
Although a bigoted Catholic in his later years, James
had early married Lord Clarendon's daughter Anne Hyde,
and their two children, Mary and Anne, were firmly Prot-
estant. Both ladies had Protestant husbands. The beauti-
ful and gentle Mary married the far-sighted and able William
of Orange, governor (or stadtholder) of the Dutch Repub-
lic, and Anne, indolent and good-natured herself, was
mated with the insignificant Prince George of Denmark.
Mary of Modena, the king's second wife, was a Catholic
and had as yet borne him no children.
The apprehension which pervaded England at the thought
of a Catholic sovereign was allayed by several considera-
tions. James swore to maintain the Church of England un-
changed. The Church had stood by his father and had gen-
erally been found loyal. The nation believed that the king
would keep his word. Even if he proved faithless, his suc-
cessor, the Protestant Mary, would set all 4 things right. But
James was no more trustworthy than his brother had been;
252 Ax Outlixe History of Exgland.
he broke the promises of his coronation oath, reversing the
laws, refusing to consult with Parliament, accepting a secret
subsidy from Louis XIV., and striving by the roughest tyr-
anny to establish the Catholic religion and his own absolute
authority. After four years of his cruel despotism his sub-
jects deserted him, and, by the revolution of 1688, drove him
from the throne.
The year 1685 was eventful. The Scottish Parliament
met in April, and passed a barbarous law against those who
attended any other than the Episcopal Church. Death and
forfeiture of property was the penalty for preaching in
a private room or of attending an open-air meeting or con-
venticle. To take the solemn oath of the Covenant was
treason. The Covenanters were persecuted with merciless
zeal by Graham of Claverhouse, a colonel of dragoons, soon
named the " Bloody Claverhouse." The English Parliament
met in May. The recent changes in the borough charters
gave the court party, the Tories, control of the House of
Commons. They did as the king pleased, granting him ample
revenues, and confirming his title to the throne by new laws
for the punishment of treason.
The party struggles, revolutions, and conspiracies of the
past few years had sent many Englishmen and Scots into
enforced or voluntary exile. Among these were the Scottish
earl of Argyle, and the English duke of Monmouth. Argyle
was the son of the great marquis who had lent the aid of
Scotland to the English Parliament against Charles I., and
Monmouth was that illegitimate son of Charles II. in whose
favor Shaftesbury had endeavored to exclude the duke of
York from the succession. The banished men gathered a
few followers in Holland. In May Argyle landed in the
west of Scotland and summoned to his aid his clansmen,
the Campbells, and all others who wished to overthrow the
prosecuting Parliament and abolish the episcopacy. Only
Clan Campbell rallied to their chief, and they were soon dis-
The English Revolution. 253
perscd. Argyle was taken and executed June 30, 1G85. Mon-
mouth's expedition had the same end. The duke landed in
Dorset with eighty men. He issued a braggart proclamation
charging James II. with tyranny, papistry, conspiracy, and
the murder of Charles II. Monmouth asserted that Charles
was his lawful father, and that he, and not James, should
wear the crown. But the Whig nobles who had once upheld
the "Protestant Duke " were for ^ivin^ James a trial. West
of England miners, artisans, and peasants to the number of
six thousand joined Monmouth, but the lords and gentry held
aloof. On July 6, 1685, the royal army scattered the peas-
ant force in the Battle of Sedgemoor — the last battle fought
in England. Monmouth tried to escape, but was captured
and beheaded eight days later. Colonel Kirke's fierce sol-
diery, called " Kirke's Lambs," from the figure of a lamb
which graced their banner, had killed in cold blood all the
fugitives whom they could find after the fight, but their
atrocities did not slake the king's thirst for revenge. He
sent the most brutal of his judges, the drunken Chief-Justice
Jeffreys, to try the cases of the rebels. This court, called
" the bloody assize," condemned three hundred persons to
execution, and three times as many were sold into slavery.
The cruelty with which the rebellions had been crushed had
its effect when Parliament assembled for its autumnal session.
It was noticed, moreover, that the king leaned more upon the
counsels of his father confessor, the Jesuit Petre, and other
Romanists than upon his ministers of state. News came also
that Louis XIV., the king's friend and model, had revoked
the Edict of Nantes, by which Henry of Navarre (159S) had
granted tolerance to the French Protestants. More than fifty
thousand Huguenot families emigrated in consequence of the
revocation, many settling in Holland, many more in England
and America. English Protestants took warning. Parliament
granted the king funds for the support of a standing army,
but rejected his demand for repeal of the Test Act, which pre-
254 An Outline History of England.
vented him from giving office to Catholics. James adjourned
the sitting on November 27, and did not again assemble the
two Houses.
With the army at his back, and a corps of subservient
judges to decide upon the legality of his course, the king felt
able to dispense with Parliaments. It had long been con-
sidered lawful for the sovereign to dispense with the action
of laws to a certain slight degree, and James now pushed this
prerogative to its utmost. In 1686 he dispensed with the Test
Act, giving office to a papist. The courts decided that the
appointment was valid. The English clergy took alarm at
the extension of Catholic influence. The king attended mass
himself and treated the Romanists with distinction. Pulpits
which denounced Catholic doctrines were to be disciplined,
and a new court of ecclesiastical commission, of which
Jeffreys was one, was set up to enforce the submission of the
English Church. In 1687 papists were placed in the university
faculties. Monasteries and Jesuit schools were opened in
London, and were largely attended.
Making use of his confirmed authority to dispense with the
laws the king raised Petre and several Catholic peers to his
council, following this with a wholesale dispensation — the
" Declaration of Liberty of Conscience," granting indulgence
to all sects, Protestant and Catholic, in England and Scotland-
issued in April, 1687. Just a year later this declaration was
repealed. The Protestant clergy refused to read the declara-
tion. Archbishop Sancroft, and Bishops Ken, Lake, Lloyd,
Turner, Trelawney, and White — "the seven bishops" —
petitioned the king not to insist upon obedience to his illegal
order. They were imprisoned in the tower for uttering a
"false, malicious, and seditious libel."
Before the day of the bishops' trial the nation was startled
by the news that the queen had borne a son (June 10, 1688).
The birth of a prince meant disinheritance to the princesses
Mary and Anne, upon whom the Protestant hopes were fixed.
The English Revolution. 255
It was immediately asserted that the queen was not the mother
of the boy — James Francis Edward Stuart, as he was
christened — but that it was a supposititious child procured to
trick the nation of its rightful ruler. In the midst of the
popular uproar the seven bishops were acquitted, June 30,
1688. London ran wild with delight, and even the royal
troops stationed at Hounslow to overawe the city cheered the
verdict in the very face of the king.
All parties were, in fact, deserting the despot. The Whigs
had long looked upon James's son-in-law, William of Orange,
as the king's successor, and now the Church of England and
the Tories turned to the same deliverer. On the day of the
bishops' acquittal Admiral Herbert bore to Holland a secret
invitation to William to save England from her ruler. Seven
representative signatures were affixed to tins famous document:
"The Whig earl of Devonshire, the Tory earl of Danbv,
the earl of Shrewsbury, Bishop Compton, of London ; the
republican Henry Sidney, Lord Lumley, of the army, and
Edward Russell, of the navy." These "seven eminent
persons," or " seven patriots," told the Dutch stadtholder that
if he would come over with an army he would be welcomed
by the nation as a deliverer.
William of Orange was then thirty-eight years of age;
physically weak, but a good soldier and wise statesman. To
circumscribe the ambition of Louis XIV. by forming a
European league was the object of his careful diplomacy, and
it was a part of his plan to add England to the league. As
the husband of the Princess Mary he had a right to expect at
least to share the English throne at her father's death. The
birth of the prince James Edward destroyed this expectation
and opened the way to another. The invitation of the seven
patriots confirmed the Dutch ruler's purpose to interfere in
English affairs. In October he issued a declaration to the
people of England setting forth their grievances, civil and
religious, and casting doubt upon the genuineness of the
256 An Outline History of England.
new-born prince. By request of eminent persons he had de-
cided to come to England with an army, not for conquest, but
to secure the assembling of a Parliament in which the people
might redress their own wrongs. On the 1st of November,
1688, the Dutch fleet, with the king and fourteen thousand
troops, set sail, landing on the 5th — Guy Fawkes day — at
Torbay, in the west of England.
Too late James discovered what he had lost. In October
he had made a supreme endeavor to regain the support of the
Church and the Tories by abolishing his court of ecclesiastical
commission, by proving the birth of his son, and by promising
to call a Parliament. Then he called the officers of his army
together and received their oaths of loyalty. Meanwhile the
country was rising to welcome William. The towns of the
north deserted the king, and the gentry of the west flocked
to the army of invasion. William kept his men strictly in
hand. Plunder and outrage were forbidden, and the nation
was impressed with the truth of the commander's assertion
that he came as a friend. There was little work for troops.
John Churchill and his fellow generals, who had sworn to
die for their king, deserted to William. Kirke led his regi-
ment of "lambs" into the Dutch fold. Even the Princess
Anne, influenced by her friend Sarah Jennings, Churchill's
wife, deserted her father's waning cause. " God help me,"
said the saddened king, " my own children forsake me."
Having sent the queen and his infant son to France (Decem-
ber 10), he tried to make his own escape, but was taken and
sent back to London. But William, who had now led his
forces to the capital, wished to avoid Cromwell's task of
dealing with a captive king, and no tears were shed when
James eluded his guards and fled across the Channel (Decem-
ber 22, 1088). v Louis XIV. received him with favor in
France, granted him the royal residence of St. Germains and
a munificent revenue to support a royal court.
In January, 1689, after a few weeks of a provisional gov-
The English Revolution. 257
ernment, William assembled a " Convention Parliament,"
in accordance with the advice of his English friends. The
Commons forthwith voted, and the Lords agreed, that James
by misgovernment had forfeited his right to the throne, and
" that it hath been found inconsistent with the safety and wel-
fare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a popish
prince." After some negotiations the crown was offered to
William and Mary jointly, February 13, 1G89, and accepted
by them. At the same time Parliament presented a Declara-
tion of Rights,* intended as a fresh definition and limitation
of the royal authority. Nearly every right therein asserted
had been transgressed by the Stuart kings.
King William, for he exercised the chief power although
his wife held equal rank, made up his cabinet of advisers
impartially from the Whig and Tory lords. In March, 1G89,
Parliament and clergy took the oaths of allegiance to Will-
iam and Mary. A few refused to swear, and two years later
six bishops and several hundred rectors were deprived of
their livings as "non-jurors."
This first Parliament of the joint reign enacted a number
of laws of the greatest interest and importance. A new sys-
tem of finance was needed. A new law now made it neces-
sary for the exchequer to present to Parliament each year an
itemized estimate of the expense of administration for the
* This document declared: 1. That it is illegal for the king to make laws
or suspend their action without consent of Parliament. 2. That the king
may not grant dispensations from the laws. 3. That the Court of Ecclesi-
astical Commission and others like it are unlawful. 4. That the king may
not raise money without the consent of Parliament. 5. That it is lawful to
petition the sovereign. 6. That no standing army may be maintained with-
out the consent of Parliament. 7. That private persons may keep anus.
8. That Parliamentary elections must be free. 9. That parliamentary debate
must be Dee. 10. That excessive bail shall never be demanded from an
accused person. 11. That every trial shall be by jury. 12. That grants
of estates as forfeited before the conviction of the offender are illegal.
13. That Parliament shall be held frequently.
258 An Outline History of England.
year to come. To meet these expenses the Houses appro-
priated sums of money. In this way the control of the na-
tional expenditure was confided to the representatives of the
people. Another law, the Mutiny Act, settled the dan-
gerous question of the support of the standing army. The
royal officers were given power for one year to enforce dis-
cipline. As this act is renewed annually, and the money for
the pay of the troops is appropriated annually, it is neces-
sary for the king to assemble Parliament at least once a year.
The Declaration of Rights which the convention had issued
became a statute law known as the Bill of Rights. It further
confirmed the title of William and Mary, and declared that
no papist should ever reign in England.
The merely personal union of England and Scotland was
dissolved by the deposition of James II.; but a majority of
the Scots preferred William to a Stuart king, and in* March,
1689, offered the crown of Scotland to the joint sovereigns
of England. William accepted for himself and his queen,
and they were proclaimed in Edinburgh in April. The Pres-
byterian Kirk was re-established, and in many places the
Covenanters, exasperated by long oppression, expelled with
insult and abuse the clergy of the older Church. Graham
of Claverhouse, the hated trooper, now Viscount Dundee, took
refuge in the Highlands, and gathered the mountain clans in
the name of King James. But Dundee fell in the pass of
Killiecrankie, July 17, 1689, and the Highland forces were
dispersed. Sir John Dalrymple of Stair was made William's
representative in the northern kingdom.
The pacification of the north was accomplished in 1691.
William offered pardon to all chiefs who should disarm and
take the oath of allegiance before January 1, 1692. All sub-
mitted except the small Clan Macdonald, dwelling in the
valley of Glencoe. The Macdonalds did not yield until six
days later, and Dalrymple had meanwhile gained William's
signature to an order " to extirpate that sept of thieves."
The English Revolution. 259
Soldiers were immediately stationed in the glen, and on
February 13,1692, executed the fatal order. Forty unarmed
men were slain, and women and children were driven out
into the snow to perish. This was the famous Massacre of
Glencoe.
The pacification of Ireland was a more difficult task. It
had been the policy of James II. to build up in that island
a power upon which he might rely if driven from England.
Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, was his representative
there. He was a Catholic, of Norman-Irish descent, and an
unscrupulous adventurer. He purged the Irish military and
civil service of Protestants, and raised and drilled a large
army devoted to James and the Roman Catholic Church.
Having completed these preparations the earl offered his sup-
port to the fugitive king.
TyrconnePs invitation to come to Ireland reached King
James in his retreat at St. Germain's. Louis XIV. of France
approved of the project, and gave him arms and treas-
ure. In March, 1689, James joined Tyrconnel. The panic-
stricken Irish Protestants crowded into the poorly defended
towns of Londonderry and Enniskillen, and, though beset by
James with overwhelming numbers, held out for months.
Their sufferings were terrible and their conduct heroic.
Walker, a Protestant minister, inspired the garrison of
Londonderry to keep their " no-surrender " flag flying until
help came. Famine and fever came first, but when only two
days' rations remained a merchant vessel from the English
fleet broke the boom across the River Foyle, and relieved the
sufferers. James's French lieutenant raised the siege August
1, 1689. On the same day the Enniskilleners put their Irish
besiegers to flight at Newtown Butler.
In 1690 King William himself came over to Ireland to
try conclusions with James. Schomberg, William's gener-
al, had a large army, composed of Englishmen and Ulster-
men, who wore the orange colors of the Dutch king of
200 An Outline History of England. .
England. The army of James was inferior in numbers. On
July 1, 1690, the two armies met in the Battle of the Boyne.
William, though slightly wounded, fought at the head of his
men. James watched the combat from a distance, and when
the broken lines of the Frenchmen fled after the flying Irish
the discouraged king spurred his horse toward Dublin,
whence lie took ship for France. William returned to England
to conduct the war which France had now declared against him.
His generals in Ireland were opposed by the brave and be-
loved Patrick Sarsfield. In 109 1 even Sarsfield had to yield.
But by the treaty of Limerick he secured the privilege for his
soldiers to enter the French service. Ten thousand Irish
exiles thereby passed into the armies of France.
William's continental policy brought on the French war.
His aim was to check the ambition of France, which under
Louis XIV. was the most formidable State in Europe. In
1(586 he had formed the League of Augsburg, which had
held Louis's hands in Germany while the Dutch fleet was
bearing the stadtholder to England. In 1689 William added
Holland and England to the Augsburg combination, forming
the " Grand Alliance." The German emperor, the king of
Spain, and the duke of Savoy agreed with William to curb
the power of Louis and strip him of his conquests.
After two years of indecisive fighting on land and sea, in
1692 Louis gathered the full military strength of his king-
dom to shake oft' his assailants. One army was told off for
the invasion of England, while 100,000 Frenchmen faced
William in the Netherlands. England's peril encouraged
James, and he called upon his loyal English to welcome the
French. But the invaders never crossed the Channel ;
" On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
Did the English fight the French — woe to France ! "
and Lord Russell so shattered Admiral Tourville's fleet that
the plan of invasion had to be abandoned. The land cam-
The English Revolution. 261
paign in the Netherlands was indecisive. England was
saved for the time being, but the object of the Alliance was
not attained.
In fact the greatest of English generals was in disgrace.
John Churchill, or Marlborough, as he may now be known,
chafed under restraint. His treachery to James had not
been rewarded so richly as his judgment demanded, and from
William, who was inclined to favor his Dutch commanders
at the expense of the English, the unscrupulous genius turned
again to James. But the correspondence was discovered and
in January, 1G29, Churchill was stripped of his offices. With-
out him the English armies were unsuccessful.
Parliament had made itself essential to the government,
and during this reign and all succeeding it was assembled
with regularity. The legislation of the reign added enor-
mously to the safeguards upon English liberty. The griev-
ances which had been the burden of the Stuart Parliaments
were redressed by process of law under the equable and just
rule of William. In his second Parliament (1G90-1695) the
Tories were in the majority. Their favor inclined toward
the Stuart party. The allowances of money to the king
were cut down, and the former supporters of James IT. were
pardoned by an Act of Grace. William's plan of choosing
his ministers from the leaders of the two parties had created
discord, and in 1693, on the advice of Lord Sunderland, one of
James's traitorous counselors, the king formed a new cab-
inet, selecting all the members from the Whigs. In this
Whig "junto " were Somers, the jurist, and Montague, the
financier.
The latter minister carried out several important projects.
In 1692-1693 the treasury had failed to make both ends
meet, and a large deficit resulted. Montague and Parliament
met the difficulty by the experiment, new to English finance,
of borrowing money on interest. A loan of £1,000,000 was
contracted at 10 per cent. This was the beginning of the
2C2 Ax Outline History of England.
English national debt. At the next session (1693-1694) the
deficit recurred, and a company of London merchants helped
the exchequer to meet its obligations by a loan of £1,200,000.
The subscribers to the loan were granted certain privileges
which they have since retained as the " Governor and Com-
pany of the Bank of England." The shrewd mind of Will-
iam Patcrson, a Scot, first suggested to Montague the plan of
this bank, which now, ''the old lady of Threadneedle Street/'
i> the world's strongest banking institution.
The Triennial Act of 1694 math* it obligatory for the king
to order a general election for members of Parliament at least
once in three years. This period was later extended to seven
years by a law still in force. The Long Parliament of
Charles I. had gagged the press by an act requiring all prints
to be licensed. Miltoirs free spirit had protested against
this restriction upon writing, bnt the law was enforced with
some degree of strictness until 1695, when it lapsed, and Par-
liament declined to renew it. Xewspapers sprang up as soon
as the old law perished.
The gentle Queen Mary, still young, beautiful, and devot-
ed, fell a victim to the small-pox Dec. 28, 1694, and her
impassive husband confessed with tears that he was now
" the miserablest of earth's creatures."
The war in the Spanish Netherlands dragged heavily. In
1693 William lost the battle of Neerwinden; in 1695 he re-
took Xamur. France was distressed by the constant drain
of men and money, and in 1697 (Sept. 20) Louis consented to
the compromise Peace of Ryswick, by which he recognized
the sovereignty of William in England and the right of the
Princess Anne to succeed him.
At the dawn of peace the English Parliament awoke to
the feeling that England had been used to forward the in-
terests of Holland. Measures were undertaken which re-
buked the policy of the king. The army was reduced, and
the Dutch troops sent home. The grants of Irish lands
The English Revolution. 263
which William had made to his countrymen wore annulled.
All these annoyances showed William that the English peo-
ple, who had welcomed his aid to stamp out the Stuart tyr-
anny, were dissatisfied with the rule of a foreigner. But
toward the close of his life an event took place which showed
the English how vitally they were concerned with the affairs
of Europe, and how wise had been the rule of their Dutch
master.
The question of " the Spanish succession " * had perplexed
the courts of western Europe for a generation. The royal
family of Spain was dying out. Charles II. was childless,
and it was his right to dispose of his immense possessions at
his death. By intermarriage the ruling family in Spain were
related to the ruling families of both France and the German
Empire. That the Spanish dominions should pass entire,
either to Louis XIV. or to the Emperor Leopold I., was un-
bearable to the other European states, among whose states-
men the modern theory of preserving peace by maintaining
the " balance of power " was now taking form. To disarm
opposition, therefore, Louis and Leopold renounced their
own claims to the inheritance, the one asking that his sec-
ond son, the Archduke Charles, be made heir, the other
claiming the crown for his second grandson, Philip of Anjou.
•CLAIMANTS TO THE SPANISH SUCCESSION.
PHILIP III. of Spain.
I
I I I
Anna, Maria Anna,
m. Louis XIII. of France. Philip IV. of Spain. . m. Ferdinand,
Emperor.
Ill II
Louis XIV. of France=Maria Charles II. of Spain, Margaret Theresa= Leopold,
| Theresa. d. 1700. Emperor.
Louis (dauphin). Maximilian=Maria Antoinette.
| Elector of Bavaria. I
(2d son.)
Philip, Joseph, Charles,
PUKE OF ANJOU, " THE ELECTORAL PRINCE," "THE ARCHDUKE,"
to whom Charles willed proposed by first partition for whom England,
his crown, for whom the treaty for king of Spain, Holland, and the
French fought, and whom but died 1699. Empire fought,
peace left king of Spain, Afterward Emperor
Philip V. Charles VI. (1711).
264 An Outline History of England.
Joseph, electoral prince of Bavaria, a grandson of Leopold
and a kinsman of Charles II., was a third claimant.
The powers of Europe undertook to settle the succession
themselves, and while they were planning to divide the Span-
ish possessions the king suddenly died (November, 1700), and
made Philip of Anjou his sole heir.
Louis XIV. saw his wildest dreams of dominion about to
be realized. France and Spain were practically united.
" The Pyrenees exist no longer," said the exultant Louis to
his grandson, as he set out for his royal inheritance.
The impending absorption of the Spanish monarchy by the
ambition of Louis frustrated all that William of Orange had
given his life to secure. But the Hollander's spirit was un-
conquerable, and he faced the new danger with the old de-
termination. The recklessness of Louis aided his enemies.
At the bedside of the exiled James II. of England, who lay
dying at St. Germains, the French monarch renewed his prom-
ise of friendship, and recognized his son, James Francis Ed-
ward Stuart (known as the " Old Pretender " ), as the rightful
king of England.
The news that France had again espoused the Stuart cause
aroused the patriotism of England, and a new Parliament
enthusiastically supported William in his policy of war. The
occupation of the Spanish Netherlands by French' troops
menaced Holland and aroused the Dutch Republic. The
emperor, whose grandson had been slighted, was eager for re-
venge. A common purpose united the three countries, and
under William's direction the " Grand Alliance " was revived
in September, 1701, to place the archduke on the Spanish
throne, to expel France from the Netherlands and the Indies,
and to prevent the union of the French and Spanish crowns.
Before hostilities opened William had died, March 8, 1702.
Anne Stuart, younger daughter of James II. and Anne
Hyde, was immediately proclaimed queen. Her husband,
George of Denmark, of whom his uncle Charles II. said he
The English Revolution. 205
had " tried him drunk and sober and found nothing," received
no share in the government. Anne came to the throne at a
fortunate time for her reputation. Her subjects loved the
good-natured, slow-minded, matronly Englishwoman, and
called her "good Queen Anne."
Between the Princess Anne and Sarah Jennings, a lady of
the court, had long existed the closest intimacy, and the
brilliant mind of the latter held the other as if bewitched.
Sarah Jennings had married John Churchill, Lord Marl-
borough, the young officer who had betrayed James II. His
ability was so undoubted that the dying king had no better
advice for Anne than that she should take Marlborough's
advice in the conduct of the war of the Spanish succession,
which was his baleful bequest.
Anne had not been queen a week before the earl of Marl-
borough was commander-in-chief of all the English land forces.
Without hesitation he opened the campaign in the Spanish
Netherlands and struck France a smarting blow on that fron-
tier. No English general from Edward the Black Prince
to the duke of Wellington won such successes from the
French as did John Churchill (made duke of Marlborough in
reward for the victories of 1702) in the next ten years of the
war. He was formed by nature to win the regard of men.
Singularly beautiful of countenance, of fine figure and grace-
ful carriage, his outward appearance united with his words
and actions to charm all with whom he had to do. He was
cool in the moment of battle, fearless but not courting
danger, careful of the lives of his men, watchful of the
sick and wounded, and merciful to his prisoners of Avar.
To his wife he was attached by the tenderest affection,
fearing her displeasure more than the French cannon.
Yet this great man's character was disfigured by some of
the meanest of human failings. He was unutterably selfish.
He won victories not for England nor for the righteous
cause in which he fought, but for his own glory. To be
12
266 An Outline History of England.
the greatest and richest man in the kingdom was the summit
of his ambition.
Queen Anne accepted Marlborough's friend, Lord Godol-
phin, as her chief minister, and he ably co-operated with the
general by supplying men and money for the campaigns.
The United Provinces (Holland) intrusted their forces also
to the English leader. The commander of the emperor's
northern army was a dashing soldier, Prince Eugene of
Savoy, and a generous and hearty friendship soon united the
two generals. In 1704 they won their first great success.
Louis had dispatched an army eastward through friendly
Bavaria to strike Vienna, the capital of the empire. Marl-
borough divined the purpose of the maneuver and, regardless
of hampering instructions, he led his army into Germany
and, joining Eugene, intercepted the French and Bavarian
army near Blenheim on the Danube, August 13, 1704. The
duke's personal charge at the head of eight thousand cavalry
broke the weakened center of the foe, and decided the bat-
tle. There had not been such a harvest of French lilies in
the sixty years of Louis's reign. Two thirds of the king's
troops were slain or taken captive, and their marshal him-
self was among the eleven thousand prisoners. England re-
warded Marlborough Avith the royal manor of Woodstock,
and built the palace of Blenheim for his residence.
Marlborough's campaigns were all in the north, but the
allies attacked France on every side. A few weeks before
Blenheim the fortress of Gibraltar had surrendered (July 24,
1704) to an English fleet, and in the succeeding year Lord
Peterborough, a profligate genius, captured Barcelona.
On May 23, 1706, Marlborough with sixty thousand
men defeated Marshal Villeroy at Ramillies, in Brabant
(Belgium), so thoroughly that all French strongholds of the
Netherlands — Antwerp, Brussels, Ostend, Ghent, Bruges —
yielded with scarcely a show of resistance.
Disaster marked the succeeding years. Disagreements
The English Revolution. 207
between too many masters kept Marlborough and Eugene
idle for a time, but in 1708 they were again companions in
arms. Together they crushed the French Army of the
North at Oudenarde, July 11, 1708, and together besieged
and reduced the fortress of Lille.
France now sought for peace; Louis was willing to aban-
don all his conquests, but to one humiliating condition he
would not stoop. His grandson Philip, the accepted sover-
eign of a large portion of Spain, refused to yield his crown,
and Louis indignantly rejected the demand of the allies that
he should expel him with French troops. " If light I must,"
said the hard-pressed Louis, " I will fight my enemies rather
than my own children." Negotiations failed, and the bank-
rupt and starving French nation took up arms with new zeal
in a more righteous cause.
Marlborough's troops felt the new temper of the metal at
Malplaquet (September, 1709). The English won, but with
tremendous loss. " God grant such another defeat," reported
the French marshal to his king, " and your majesty could count
your enemies destroyed." Ten thousand Frenchmen were
dead, but the allies had lost twenty thousand. This was the
last great battle, though peace was not declared until 1713.
While the "duke of Marlborough and our good Prince
Eugene " were winning great praises on continental battle-
fields, England had other business than voting supplies and
sending re-enforcements across the Channel. Party struggles
— Whig and Tory — were enlivening island politics and vexing
the Court. Queen Anne was naturally a Tory, a strong sup-
porter of the Established Church, and opposed to the war,
though the power of Sarah Churchill's will prolonged her
support of Marlborough.
Immediately after Anne's ascension the Scotch began to
cast about for an heir to their throne. They had accepted
the English sovereigns William and Mary and Queen Anne,
but they did not fully accept the Act of Settlement (1701)
263 An Outline History of England.
which fixed the succession in the line of Sophia of Hanover
and her Protestant descendants. They demanded that the
wearer of the Scottish crown should guarantee to the nation
its existing religion, and freedom of trade. Commissioners of
both nations met in London, in 1706, to discuss a plan of
union; they were remarkably successful, and on May 1, 1707,
the two kingdoms — England and Scotland — became the one
kingdom of Great Britain, with a common sovereign accord-
ing to the Act of Settlement, a common Parliament, and a
common coinage. Scottish law and the Scottish Church re-
mained unchanged. The " Old Pretender," James Edward
Stuart, came over in 1708 to profit by the Scottish dissatis-
faction with the union, but the Jacobites, as his partisans were
called, gave hihi no support and he went back unrequited.
The length and expense of the war told upon its popular-
ity. The Whigs, who had been Churchill's main support in
England, gradually lost power and influence. The queen
drew closer to the Tory leaders, Robert Harley and Henry
St. John.
St. John, afterward Viscount Bolingbroke, was a noted
infidel, a writer of merit, and an accomplished statesman. Har-
ley was of ignoble parts, but surpassed in " back-stairs poli-
tics." To cancel Lady Marlborough's influence with the
queen he pressed his cousin, Abigail Hill, an attendant of the
palace, upon Anne's favor. The ruse was successful. The
gentle Abigail (afterward Lady Masham) gradually sup-
planted the haughty Sarah. In 1710 Lord Godolphin, Marl-
borough's friend and English agent, was dismissed from the
royal council with all his Whig colleagues, and in 1711 Har-
ley took Godolphin's office as prime minister with the title
earl of Oxford and Mortimer.
Marlborough came back to London to stay the storm if
possible. The archduke Charles, for whom the allies had
been fighting, had unexpectedly become emperor (1711), and
neither England nor Holland now wished to add Spain to
The English Revolution. 2G9
his possessions. So the war languished; indeed, the Tories
were secretly treating for peace with King Louis. The
duke's hopes were bound up in the war, but a personal letter
from. Anne dashed them to despair. The queen dismissed
him from all his offices on charge of embezzling military
funds. He denied the accusation but left the kingdom.
The Tories pressed for peace. Possessing a majority in
the Commons they fretted for the upper House until the
queen created twelve new Tory peers— Abigail Hill's hus-
band, Mr. Masham, among them. With Parliament under
close rein the Tory plan was carried out. The Peace of
Utrecht, which closed the Avar of the Spanish succession, was
formally signed in March, 1713. Few of its many articles
deserve place here. Philip of Anjou, the grandson of Louis
XIV., was confirmed as King Philip V. of Spain, whose
throne his Bourbon descendant, Alfonso XIII., still occupies.
France renounced its support of the Stuart pretenders, and
formally recognized the Protestant settlement of the English
succession. Great Britain gained Nova Scotia, Newfound-
land, Gibraltar, and a few less important territories.
The Protestant succession, which was confirmed so many
times in unions, settlements, and treaties, seems to have stood
in some slight hazard in England itself as the time of its
realization drew near. Anne, the widowed mother of seven-
teen children, had in 1714 survived them all. Her apprehen-
sions for the safety of the Church had been soothed by the
law of 1711 to suppress the "occasional conformity" by which
dissenting candidates for public office had smothered their
consciences for a day and taken the Episcopal communion as
the Test and Corporation acts required. Three years later
Bolingbroke's harsher " Schism Act " was passed with the
intention of disqualifying dissenting teachers. But the queen's
sudden death left the law unproclaimed and void.
The death of the Electress Sophia left her son George
Louis heir to the English throne. He was fifty-four years old,
2 TO An Outline History of England.
was nominally a Protestant, but could speak no English, and
knew little and cared less about the government of England.
Many Englishmen shrank from calling in such a king. The
Jacobites, ever plotting, hoped to bring in the Pretender, and
they were encouraged to think that Lord Bolingbroke in the
cabinet meant to effect their object. Whether this was
Bolingbroke's purpose or not must remain doubtful, but it is
certain that he had a bitter quarrel with Lord Oxford (Har-
ley) in the royal presence which resulted in Oxford's imme-
diate dismissal. The excitement gave the queen a stroke of
apoplexy. And while the court and London were in an up-
roar, Whig and Tory and Jacobite contending, Anne gave
the badge of the prime minister's office to the duke of
Shrewsbury, one of the " seven patriots " who had signed the
invitation to William in 1G88. His selection settled the
question of the succession in favor of the Protestant House
of Brunswick. Queen Anne breathed her last August 1,
1714, and George the First was quietly proclaimed king of
Great Britain and Ireland.
House of Hanover, or Brunswick. 271
CHAPTER XV.
HOUSE OP HANOVER, OR BRUNSWICK. 1714 A. D.-1830 A. D.
FROM THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE I. TO THE DEATH OF GEORGE IV.
King George I. was born in Germany, of German parents,
in the year of the Restoration (16G0), and although he had
traveled far and fought well in the armies of the empire he
had never set foot in England until September 18, 1714, when
he landed as king of Great Britain and Ireland. From his
father, Ernest Augustus, George had inherited the duchy of
Brunswick-Lilneburg and the electorate of Hanover. The
duchy was one of the numerous states of the German Empire,
and its duke was also electoral prince of Hanover, one of the
princes who voted at the election of the emperor ; hence the
royal family of England is known, from one title or the other,
as the House of " Hanover " or of " Brunswick." * From his
mother, the Electress Sophia, George inherited whatever rights
* THE HOUSE OP HANOVER, OR BRUNSWICK.
JAMES I.
I I
CHARLES I. ^beheaded 1649). Elizabeth,
| m. Frederick V., Elector Palatine,
j j j and " Winter king of Bohemia."
CHARLES II. Mary, JAMES II. !
m. William II. (deposed 1U88). I I
of Orange. (4.) Rupert. (12.) Sophia,
j m. Ernest Augustus,
Elector of Hanover.
WILLIAM III.=MARY. ANNE. James Fr. Edward |
> , ' " Old Pretender." GEORGE I.
Protestants. I
I 1 GEORGE II.
Charles Edward, Henry, etc.
" Young Pretender," Cardinal York. |
d. 1788. | Protectants.
Catholics.
272 Ax Outline History of England.
lie had to the English throne. The Act of Settlement (1"01)
declared that, Queen Anne dying childless, the crown should
go to Sophia, and to her Protestant descendants after her.
Sophia, it need scarcely be repeated, was a sister of Rupert
the cavalier, a daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia, and a grand-
daughter of James I. of England.
George had hitherto been very much his own master in
his little Brunswick duchy, but the Parliament had built up
such a barrier against royal authority in England that neither
this monarch nor his son and successor took much trouble to
get through it or climb over it. Finding that the English
were bent upon governing themselves by means of Parliament
and royal ministers George prudently refused to interfere.
So he made up a cabinet from the Whigs, to whom he owed
a debt of gratitude, and intrusted the government to them
while he drew his allowances from the treasury, took his
pleasure with his Brunswick cronies, and managed the affairs
of the home duchy to the best of his very commonplace
ability.
The closing events of Anne's reign gave ground for the
charge that the Tory leaders had plotted to betray the crown
to the Pretender, and the national aversion to the Catholic
Stuarts gave the Whigs a long lease of power. Parliament
impeached Anne's ministers — Bolingbroke, Oxford, and
Ormond (Marlborough's successor) — and quelled the Jacobite
tumults in the towns by passing the Riot Act (1715), which
made it felony for an unlawful assembly not to disperse
after the "reading of the riot act " by a magistrate.
Bolingbroke and Ormond escaped. Oxford went to the
Tower, but the riots presaged a new Stuart rising. The
Scottish earl of Mar, then a Jacobite, although he turned his
coat more than once, roused the Highlanders to renew the
light for the Pretender, James Edward. Six thousand clans-
men, wearing the white cockade, joined him ; but he proved
a worthless leader. Delaying until his enemy Argyle
House of Hanover, or Brunswick. 273
gathered a royal army, he was beaten at Sheriffmuir. In
December the Pretender arrived in Scotland to find his cause
mismanaged and lost ; so he betook him nimbly back to
France to bide his time. A few north of England gentle-
men who had recklessly shown their Jacobite colors being
captured in arms died as traitors — twenty-eight of them in
all. In 1717, 1718, and 1719 the Pretender and his friends
made other fruitless attempts to regain the crown, but from
1715 to 1745 the throne was not seriously imperiled.
The first care of the Whig ministers had been to rid them-
selves of the Tory leaders. Their next work was to perpetu-
ate their own control. The Parliament in which they had a
majority was soon to expire by the limitation of the Triennial
Act. The Whigs were so well satisfied with the bird in the
hand that, to avoid the risks of a general election, they carried
the Septennial Act; from that time till this Parliaments have
been chosen at least once in seven years. (The first Parliament
of George I. sat, with adjournments, from 1 715 to 1722.) The
third care of the cabinet was to undo the Tory legislation
against dissenters; the repeal (1718) of the law against "oc?
casional conformity " and the Schism Act removed the bar^
riers by which the Tories had striven to block the avenues to
education and the public service against all except members
of the Church of England.
England was settling down into a period of unruffled pros-
perity when, in 1720, a money-panic shook the kingdom to its
center. In 1713 the South Sea Company was formed in Lon-
don to trade with Spanish America, fondly believed to be a
mine of wealth. The idea caught the popular fancy; the
rage for speculation pushed the price of shares to tenfold
their par value. In 1720 it ^arae out that the shares were
valueless. The " South Sea Bubble " burst. Spain prohibited
English vessels to trade with her ports in America, and the
other privileges of the company were of small account.
Hundreds of families were ruined by the fall of the stock.
12*
2 74 Ax Outline History of England.
The Whig government was blamed, and it became necessary
to reconstruct the cabinet. Robert Walpole, hitherto a
subordinate minister, became prime minister, and was actual
ruler of England for the next twenty-one years, 1721-1742.
Th.it Walpole was notoriously bad in many ways is very
well known, but to his immense credit be it said that for a
generation he kept England at peace while Europe was broil-
ing with battles. lie fostered English manufactures and
trade with zealous and judicious care, and he reduced -the
national debt to the lowest figure it has ever reached — on
these acts his reputation as a statesman rests secure.
For the remaining years of the reign Walpole had little
anxiety. Parliament, chosen anew in 1722, was submissively
obedient; there were not enough Tories in it to make an
opposition, and profuse bribery removed obstacles within his
own party. In June, 1727, George I. died from a stroke
of apoplexy.
George Augustus succeeded his father as King George II.
of Great Britain and Ireland and elector of Hanover, and
followed pretty closely his father's policy of letting Walpole
and the Whigs govern the nation. Through the energetic
Queen Caroline the prime minister obtained the sovereign's
assent to his plans. But it is more difficult to manage a
nation than a monarch, and a party long continued in power
divides against itself. Walpole gradually excluded the more
influential Whigs from the highest offices, and gave little en-
couragement to new aspirants for leadership among his own
supporters. The Tories joined with these discontented
Whigs, and in 1733 defeated the premier's project for an
excise tax. They followed this by inciting a demand for
war with Spain. The merchants were anxious to secure a
share in the Spanish- American trade. The Tories wanted
any thing to beat Walpole. In 1739 he conceded the dec-
laration of war. Then they accused him of not supporting
the armies in the field. In 1742 he resigned, and took his.
House of Hanover, or Bruxswick. 275
seat in the Lords as Earl of Orford. The ministry of Pel-
ham (1743-1754) succeeded him.
King George's support of Maria Theresa, in her struggle
to maintain her right to the imperial throne of Germany, in-
volved England in another continental war. In 1744 France
was added to the enemies of England. These gathering
dangers convinced Charles Edward Stuart, son of James
Francis Edward, that the opportunity for the restoration of
the Stuarts had arrived. He landed in Scotland in 1745,
proclaimed his father in Edinburgh as King James III. of
England and James VIII. of Scotland.- A few thousand
loyal Highlanders re-enforced his army, and the small force
which opposed him at Preston Pans (September, 1745) was
shattered by the rush of the mountaineers. The Jacobite
army, doubled and trebled by victory, invaded England. In
December the young Pretender's forces were at Derby, half-
way on the road to London. There his advance was stayed.
Few Englishmen had rallied to the Stuart flag; but the
troops of the king were mustering fast. Alarmed to find the
country so cold toward him, Charles recrossed the border.
After another bravely-won battle at Falkirk, in January,
174G, his ranks dwindled, and at Culloden, on the 16th
of April, they were mercilessly slaughtered by the English
soldiers of the duke of Cumberland — " Culloden Cumber-
land."
The prince wandered five months among the Scottish
mountains, as Charles I. had wandered about England after
Worcester, escaping in the autumn of 1746 to France. The
treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), which ended the war be-
tween France and England, deprived him of that harborage.
After his father's death, in 1766, he lived in Italy, a con-
firmed drunkard. There he died, childless, in 1788.
It was not to the credit of the British government that a
rebel army of a few undisciplined regiments should march
half the length of the island and back again unopposed. The
276 An Outline History of England.
administration was weak ; Pelham and his colleagues lacked
energy ; the nation distrusted itself and feared the king, who
cared more for continental wars than for England's welfare.
The situation was alarming. The ministers either did not
foresee, or could not prevent, the alliance of the French and
Spanish Bourbon kings, and the doctrine of the " balance of
power" was left defenseless. In India the French under
Dupleix were striving to supplant the British East India
Company by ingratiating themselves with the native princes.
In America the French, firmly posted in Canada and Louis-
iana, laid claim to the region drained by the Ohio and Missis-
sippi' Rivers, and established a line of forts to hold the country
west of the Alleghany Mountains. France, arrogant and
confident, was crowding in every-where; England, despond-
ent, and dissatisfied with her rulers, was losing influence and
on the way to loss of territory. The force which Braddock
led against Fort Duquesne, at the juncture of the Alleghany
and Monongahela Rivers, was routed by the French (1755),
and only the skill of George Washington saved the colonial
troops from the fate of the redcoats. War with France
followed— " The Seven Years' War" (1756-1763).
Europe, America, and India were the battle-fields in this
conflict. In Europe the strength of the English lay in their
alliance with Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. With
their money he paid the expenses of the campaigns which
his brain directed and his soldiers fought. But Russia and
Austria, as well as France, were in arms against him, and the
European outlook in 1757 was dismal indeed. The French
won the first successes both there and in America.
England was in despair. She had no generals, her only
ally was beset by three powerful empires, her king was at
heart a foreigner, and his English ministers were incom-
petent. At this moment of humiliation, William Pitt, a
member of the House of Commons, a person without rank or
fortune, offered to save the nation. " I know that I can save
House of Hanover, or Brunswick. 277
this country," he had the confidence to say, " and I know
no other man can." In October, 1757, he became the lead-
ing spirit of the government.
Trusting supremely in the courage and purpose of the En-
glish people Pitt threw the whole force of an impetuous
nature into the war. With a great man's eye for true men he
chose new generals to replace the dukes and princes who
had been retreating before Frenchmen. Under the Ger-
man Ferdinand of Brunswick the English beat the French
at Minden in the summer of 1759. In America Fort Du-
quesne surrendered (1758), and the grateful colonists
renamed it Fort Pitt, (now Pittsburg). Amherst, one of
Pitt's new commanders, took Fort Ticonderoga on Lake
Champlain, and another untried general, James Wolfe,
fought upon the Plains of Abraham the battle with Mont-
calm, which won Quebec, Montreal, and eventually all Canada,
for England.
The slowly traveling news from India was more wonderful
yet. The British East India Company had monopolized
the trade of India for one hundred and fifty years. In 1744
Dupleix, an able Frenchman, undertook to introduce French
influence, but the ability of Robert Clive, a clerk in the
company's employ, thwarted the attempt. When the two
nations renewed hostilities in Europe Clive resumed the
field in Asia. In June, 1757, he won the battle of Plassy,
thereby becoming master of Bengal, and laying the founda-
tion of the British Empire in India.
The victories on three continents revived the spirit of the
nation. England was saved, and the people adored the
statesman who had saved her — the "Great Commoner" as
Pitt was proud to be called. The death of the king, October
25, 1760, checked his triumphant career.
While Walpole and Pitt were molding the goverment of
the nation another force was working upon the private life
of the people, and a mighty revival of religion was rattling
278 An Outline History of England.
the dry bones of the Established Church, which in the cent-
ury since the fall of Puritanism had become cold and life-
less. A group of Oxford students, nicknamed " Methodists"
from the regularity of their devotions, led the new move-
ment, which revived spiritual religion among the common
people, and purged the Church itself of the careless and
worldly clergy. John and Charles Wesley and George
Whitefield were the leaders of this important agitation. Its
results are far-reaching. Popular education, hospitals, asy-
lums, and reformed prisons are among the fruits of the seed
which the Methodists sowed.
Frederick, Prince of Wales, died before his father, and it
was his eldest son who came to the throne as King George
the Third. For sixty years (1 760-1 S20), the longest of En-
glish reigns, this prince was king of England. Within this
long period the United States achieved their independence,
the mad drama of the French Revolution was played to the
curtain fall, Napoleon Bonaparte won and lost an empire,
and the introduction of steam wrought industrial changes as
momentous as those which plunged two continents in blood.
George III. inherited the throne at the age of twenty-three
— the first Hanoverian sovereign of English birth. "Be
king, George, be king," was the constant admonition of his
mother, and to the best of his limited ability he obeyed her
ambitious instructions. Never strong of mind, but ever
strong of will, he determined not simply to reign but to rule.
For ministers he had no use except as his agents. He tried
to be his own prime minister, forming his own policy, and
executing it by means of an obedient cabinet and a House of
Commons in his pay.
There could be no sympathy between Pitt's royal nature
and the bigoted perversity of the king. The prime minister
was devoted to the continuance of the w r ar ; Pitt not only
helped Frederick of Prussia, but, finding that Spain was in
close league with France against Great Britain, he came out
House of Hanover, or Brunswick. 279
boldly for a Spanish war. The king opposed it. The enor-
mous expense of the struggle thus far turned many Whigs
against it. Unable to accomplish his purpose, the great
commoner resigned (1751). Lord Bute, a Tory, and a mere
court favorite, now became George's adviser, and in 17G2
was made prime minister, for the purpose of carrying out
the royal wishes. The Peace of Paris, between Great Britain,
France, and Spain, was signed early in 1763. France gave up
Canada and the territory between the Mississippi and the Al-
leghanies, with lesser possessions in the West Indies and
Africa. Spain ceded Florida to England.
The disgraceful servility of the House of Commons to the
king and his creatures is accounted for by its antiquated con-
stitution. Changes in the population of the nation had de-
stroyed its pretensions to representative character. Bor-
oughs populous in the early days of Parliament, and then
entitled to two members, had shrunken in size, while thriving
cities, growing up since the apportionment, had no members
at all. In many of the dwindled towms only a handful of
voters remained. A few boroughs had no voters. These
"close" or "rotten" boroughs were the property of some
nobleman — his " pocket-boroughs," and he selected the mem-
bers. Out of eight millions of people, only one hundred and
sixty thousand voted at elections. Upon this small electoral
body bribery was effective, and members of the House of
Commons itself were tempted by open offers of money,
public contracts, or high office. This state of affairs pro-
duced a stong party of " king's friends," while it made Par-
liament thoroughly unpopular with the body of the nation.
The arbitrary acts of the Commons deepened this dislike.
Subjected to bitter criticism by the press, Parliament en-
deavored to curb its liberty. In 1764 one John Wilkes, a
member, was expelled from Parliament for harsh criticisms
of the king's speech published in his paper, the North Briton.
In 1765 he sat for Middlesex in the new Parliament,, and
280 Ax Outline History of England.
having been expelled for new libels, was twice re-elected and
rejected. This called forth loud protests, as an invasion of
the rights of constituents. A series of letters (1769-1772)
published in the Daily Advertiser over the signature "Junius"
criticised the course of the government with the sharpest
pen ever used in political controversy. In 1771 the House of
Commons attempted to suppress the publication of its de-
bates. But the nation took sides with the printers, and Par-
liament prudently abandoned the prosecution, and left the
press un trammeled.
The English colonies in America, most of them founded
by fugitives from oppression at home, had gradually in-
creased in extent and population until, at the close of the
Seven Years' War (1763) they numbered thirteen colonies and
over two million souls. The British government, burdened
by debt, part of which was incurred in defense of the
northern colonies against the French and Indians, asserted
its right to tax the colonies to pay it. The colonies made a
spirited resistance, declaring the principle, "No taxation
without representation." Having no voice in Parliament they
denied the right of that body to levy taxes, although they
did not deny their liability for a share of the war expenses.
George Grenville, who succeeded Bute as minister, would
not recede from his position. He gave orders for the strict
enforcement of the revenue laws in America, and obtained
the passage of a "Stamp Act" (1765), requiring legal nnd
financial papers and other documents used in the colonies to
bear a British revenue stamp. The colonies thereupon agreed
to use no goods imported from Britain; the stamp-sellers were
mobbed, and the provinces drew together in a congress to make
protest. Grenville gave way to Rockingham. Pitt, now
Earl of Chatham, in the Lords, and Edmund Burke, the
Whig orator of the Commons, pleaded for the repeal of the
Stamp Act and generous dealings. It was repealed in March,
1766, but not until Parliament had exasperated the colonists
House of IIaxover, or Brunswick. 2S1
b}^ re-asserting its right to tax the Americans " in all cases
whatsoever."
King George was deeply offended by the repeal act. He
bated Pitt, and welcomed with delight his resignation from
the ministry. For twelve years (1770-1782) George used
Lord North as he had used Bute, as the pliant agent of his
own personal designs. First among these was the subjection
of the rebellious Americans. An attempt to compel the colo-
nists to use imported tea was thwarted in Boston in Decem-
ber, 1773, by a mob, disguised as Indians, who threw the tea
into the harbor. To punish the Bostonians Parliament passed
the "Boston Port Bill" (1774), prohibiting trade with the
rebellious city. At the same time General Gage, commander-
in-chief of the British forces in America, was made governor
of Massachusetts, with increased powers. In September the
first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, and protested
against these and similar acts of tyranny. In April of the
following year the royal troops in Massachusetts encount-
ered the provincial minute-men in the Battles of Lexington
and Concord, and the New England militia in large num-
bers surrounded Gage in Boston. Congress met in May and
appointed George Washington, of Virginia, commander of the
forces ; even before he reached the army the Battle of Bun-
ker's Hill had shown the ability of New England militiamen
to face the fire of regulars. In March, 1770, the British
evacuated Boston and removed the garrison to New York.
The war had begun in dead earnest, and the colonial leaders
recognized that retreat was impossible. On the Fourth of
July, 1776, they formally adopted a solemn statement of their
wrongs, closing with the Declaration of Independence. " We,
the Representatives of the United States of America in Con-
gress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the
world for the rectitude of our intentions, solemnly publish
and declare that these United Colonies are, and of right
ought to be, Free and Independent States."
282 An Outline History of England.
The Declaration roused England to greater exertions to
reunite the empire, and stirred the Americans to seek recog-
nition and help from Europe. The year 1776 closed disas-
trously for them, and 1777 opened even more dismally.
General Howe drove Congress from Philadelphia, but in Oc-
tober Burgoyne, advancing southward from Canada with a
fine army, was surrounded, and compelled to surrender to the
American General Gates at Saratoga.
In the House of Lords, Chatham still pleaded for reconcili-
ation, but the hour for that had passed. The Congress re-
jected all overtures. Pitt was again invited to become prime
minister, but death intervened. France, led by sympathy for
the struggling freemen and by hatred of Great Britain, recog-
nized the independence of the new States, and joined in the
war (1778) with a fleet. Spain followed her leader (1779),
and for three years and a half laid siege to General Elliot in
Gibraltar. Holland joined the allies in 1780. In the next
year the combined forces of France and America entrapped
Lord Cornwallis with a British army of seven thousand men
at Yorktown, Va., intercepted his communications with the
northern army, and finally, in October, compelled him to sur-
render. The news struck Lord North like a bullet.
The war could not go on. Weak as were the revolted
States, seven campaigns had utterly failed to subdue them.
Dangers surrounded Britain ; all Europe was hostile ; France,
Spain, and Holland at open war ; Russia, Denmark, and
Sweden leagued in an " Armed Neutrality" (1780) to resist
the English practice of searching all ships for contraband
goods. Ireland was clamoring for " home rule." Even the
long-suffering Parliament would no longer support the min-
istry, and notwithstanding the king's fixed purpose to punish
the rebels, Lord North resigned his thankless office. Rock-
ingham returned to power with a Whig ministry containing
the brilliant orators Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox, and
Richard Brinsley Sheridan. This cabinet, remodeled at Rock-
House of IIaxover, or Brunswick. 283
ingham's death by Lord Shelburnc, performed the humiliating
tasks which were set before it. Ireland was made to rejoice in
a free Parliament (Grattan's Parliament) at Dublin, and prac-
tical self-government under the crown. Peace with America
was formally declared in 1783. Great Britain recognized
the thirteen revolted colonies as the United States of Amer-
ica — an independent nation; Spain received Florida; Canada
remained loyal to the crown. In India, alone in these fatal
years, the genius of Warren Hastings, governor-general, h.d
extended the boundaries of the empire.
Before the close of the American war a British navigator,
Captain James Cook, had made a series of voyages in the Pa-
cific Ocean which made up to England her losses in the West.
He discovered the Sandwich Islands and many lesser groups
of Australasia, and opened the way for the settlement of Tas-
mania, New Zealand and Australia— destined soon to become
a' splendid portion of the empire.
The dread of the Catholics, which had molded legislation
in the preceding century, when there was really danger that
the Established Church would be Romanized, had now van-
ished so far that in 1778 the government ventured to repeal
certain oppressive acts relating to the Christians of that com-
munion. But the old animosity was only sleeping, and some
crazy utterances of Lord George Gordon awakened the fa-
natical cry that the Protestant religion was in danger. "No
popery" riots raged in London in June, 1780, for five days,
the criminal and idle taking advantage of the tumult to burn
and plunder.
William Pitt, second son of Lord Chatham, the friend of
America, became prime minister in 1783, and held that high-
est office for eighteen years (1783-1801). Under his guid-
ance Great Britain rallied from the loss of America, consoli-
dated her foreign possessions, and so increased in wealth and
military power that she became the defense of Europe
against the ambition of Napoleon Bonaparte. The younger
284 An Outline History of England.
Pitt came from college to Parliament (1781). In December,
1783, before his twenty-fifth birthday, he was first lord of the
treasury and virtual ruler of Great Britain.
"A sight to make surrounding nations stare —
A kingdom trusted to a school-boy's care! "
But the school-boy had improved his time. His great
father's instructions sank into a singularly fertile mind, and
the young man had early familiarized himself with political
economy and the problem of governing an industrial and
commercial nation. The improvement of the steam-engine
by Watt (1765), the invention of the spinning-jenny by Har-
greaves (1764), the spinning-frame by Arkw right (1768), the
"mule" spinner by Crompton (1776), and the power-loom,
gave an enormous impetus to textile manufactures. New
processes in metallurgy made available the stores of coal and
iron which had lain idle in the hills and moorlands of the
Pennine Chain. Over these industries Pitt watched with es-
pecial care, and his treaties with foreign powers fostered com-
merce by extending freedom of trade. The empire which
the East India Company had won was brought under the par-
tial control of the home government (1784). Pitt's efforts
for the reform of Parliament by the abolition of the "rotten
borouechs " were defeated, as was his bill for the abolition of
the slave-trade.
Fox, the brilliant orator of the Whigs, was Pitt's most
dangerous opponent. The king's weak mind failed under the
stress of responsibility and disappointment. The wayward-
ness of his son George, Prince of Wales, grieved and vexed
him. Fox, lately minister, drank and gambled with the
prince, and when the kings madness befell in 1788, Fox de-
manded the regency as Prince George's right. Pitt defended
the claim of Parliament to select the regent, and while- the
giants were contending the king's mind cleared again. But
from time to time the clouds returned, and after November,
1810, the sunlight never pierced them, King George III.
House of Hanover, or Brunswick. 2S5
was hopelessly insane and blind, and the profligate Prince of
Wales became regent.
From 1789 until 1815, France was the center-point of
European affairs. The condition of the kingdom was pecul-
iar. A succession of Bourbon kings had collected all author-
ity into the hands of the monarch. The nobility and the
Church remained without share in the government, but with
many privileges. These orders were exempt from the taxa-
tion which oppressed the common people, and they monopo-
lized all offices. A group of writers, of whom Jean Jacques
Rousseau was the representative, filled the nation with spec-
ulations and sentimental theories upon the constitution of
society. The doctrine of the equality of man pervaded all
classes. The young King Louis XVI. (1774-1792), kind-
hearted but irresolute, was powerless to guide reform. The
finances of the kingdom were so disordered that, in 1789, rep-
resentatives of the nation — the States General — were sum-
monded (for the first time since 1614) to consider measures of
taxation. This body, swayed by the ideas of " liberty, equal-
ity, and fraternity," abolished the privileges of aristocracy
and clergy, and formed a constitutional government not unlike
that of Great Britain. Great was the enthusiasm in England
over the French Revolution. Wordsworth says of the time :
" Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven I "
Fox welcomed it with delight. Pitt sympathized with the
French struggle for liberty, though Burke, cutting loose from
his old friends, prophesied disaster from the overturning of
the established government. The prophecy was fulfilled.
The French Republicans, dissatisfied with the moderate
revolution, hurried France into war with Germany, and be-
headed the king with his queen, Marie Antoinette, as enemies
of the nation (1793). The revolution offered its help to all
the oppressed peoples of Europe, and declared Avar upon
Holland, Spain, Germany, and England (1793-1802).
286 An Outline History of England.
Forced into the war against his will, the prime minister car-
ried it on with little of the brilliancy which had marked his
civil policy. England was strong on the sea, but no English
general could cope successfully with the young men who
led the republican armies. The armies of Austria and Prus-
sia, fed and clothed by English money, were poorly led and
accomplished nothing. In 1795 a new constitution placed
the government of the Republic in the hands of five direct-
ors. Napoleon Bonaparte, a young artillery officer, became
general of the armies, and his victories in Austrian Italy ex-
torted peace from Austria (Treaty of Campo Formio, 1797).
Pitt vainly endeavored to gain peace for England also,
but the French had other projects. The " United Irishmen "
awaited their promised assistance to break their island away
from the British Empire. But the naval victories of Jervis
over the Spanish off Cape St. Vincent in February, and the
dispersion of the Dutch fleet by Admiral Duncan at Camper-
down in October, prevented the French auxiliaries from cross-
ing the Channel. The Irish rose unaided, and were put down
in the battle of Vinegar Hill, in May, 1798. Peace with
Austria encouraged Napoleon to threaten the English pos-
sessions in India. In 1798 he conquered Egypt, but the
genius of Admiral Nelson destroyed his fleet at Aboukir
(August 1) in the famous Battle of the Nile. Foiled in an
attempt to subdue the East, Bonaparte returned alone to
France in October, 1799. He found the Directory involved
in a great war. Russia and Austria had joined hands; Pitt
had filled their war chests with British gold, and Portugal,
Naples, and Turkey had united with them to check the
French advance. By a sudden stroke Napoleon overthrew
the Directory, and set up a new constitution with himself as
First Consul. Defeats at Marengo and Ilohenlinden (1800)
forced Austria to a second peace (Treaty of Luneville, 1801),
shattering the coalition upon which Pitt had staked his hopes.
The week before the Treaty of Luneville was signed the
House of Hanover, or Brunswick. 237
great minister had resigned his office on account of a conflict
with King George. Throughout the war with France Ire-
land had been a constant menace to Great Britain. The
home rule granted in 17S2 had been a failure, for the Irish
Parliament was controlled by a few great landlords and did
not represent the nation. Accordingly, in 1800, Mr. Pitt
obtained the consent of both nations to the abolition of the
Parliament. It is said that the consent of Ireland was
shamelessly purchased. The legislative union of Great
Britain and Ireland dates from January 1, 1801. Since that
time Irish members have sat in both Houses, and one Parlia-
ment has made laws for the three kingdoms. The promise
of liberal concessions to the Roman Catholics had quieted
their opposition to the union. But these promises the Brit-
ish Parliament refused to honor. Pitt urged that all the
real or fancied perils to the State Church had disappeared
and that the Catholics deserved equal political rights. Such
a measure might have won the hearty allegiance of Ireland
to the union, but it met with the determined opposition of
the stubborn king. He had sworn on his coronation day " to
defend the faith," and he obstinately declared that no man
should force him to break that oath. The project, indeed,
was distasteful to the Protestants, and the king's enmity
destroyed its only chance of success.
Pitt resigned his office in despair, and a new ministry of
almost unknown men — the Addington cabinet — took up the
government. A league of Russia, Denmark, and other
northern maritime States confronted them. The Battle of
the Baltic (Copenhagen), won by Nelson in April, 1801, and
a reconciliation between England and the new czar, Alexan-
der of Russia, dispelled that danger, and in March, 1802, the
war with France was ended by the Peace of Amiens. Cey-
lon was the only important conquest retained by England.
The peace lasted but fourteen months, and under its cloak
Bonaparte prepared an enormous armament for the invasion
288 An Outline History of England.
of England. His intentions were so evident that England
herself declared war with France in May, 1S03. With one
voice the British nation recalled William Pitt to the head
of the government, and though near his death he obeyed
(1804). An army of volunteers was gathered in haste to
repel the invasion. The royal fleet patrolled the narrow
seas to prevent the passage of the hosts at Boulogne. " Give
us the Channel for six hours and England is ours," said Na-
poleon, but not for six minutes did the English admirals
relax their vigilance.
Meanwhile Pitt's active emissaries in the northern courts
had formed the " Third Coalition " of Austria, Sweden, and
Russia for vigorous war against Bonaparte, Avho, in 1804,
assumed the title of Emperor Napoleon. The emperor,
matchless in rapidity of decision and action, abandoned
the English expedition and hurrying eastward captured an
Austrian army at Ulm. Eight days later (October 25, 1804)
Nelson destroyed the French and Spanish fleets, and lost his
own recklessly ventured life in the Battle of Trafalgar.
The naval power of Napoleon was crushed, and for the
time the fears of England were relieved; but the emperor's
armies seemed invincible. In December, 1805, he struck
Austria and Russia a terrible blow at Austerlitz, the " bat-
tle of the three emperors." Austria hastily left the coalition
and made peace with the emperor. Prussia likewise joined
the victor. England was once more left almost alone.
The news of Austerlitz was Pitt's death-blow. "Roll
up that map," he said, pointing to the map of Europe,
" there will be no use for it these ten years; " and he spoke
truly, for the emperor carved out new kingdoms from his
conquests and changed the boundaries of nearly every State
of western Europe. On January 23, 1806, the great minis-
ter died, amid the lamentations of his countrymen, and was
buried by Lord Chatham's side in Westminster Abbey.
With characteristic subtlety Napoleon next attacked Great
House of Haxover, or Brunswick. 289
Britain through her commerce. While her navy held the
seas he could not invade the island, but he might destroy
her trade with Europe. From the capital of conquered
Prussia, in November, 1806, the emperor launched his fa-
mous " Berlin decree " closing the ports of Europe to British
trade and declaring the British Isles in a state of blockade,
great Britain answered this by its "orders in council," block-
ading the French ports and authorizing the capture of
neutral vessels trading with them. By the Peace of Tilsit
(July, 1807) Russia and Prussia were added to the countries
from which British trade was excluded by the emperor's
" continental system." The possession of Denmark would
have barred the Baltic to British commerce, and Napoleon
planned to seize that country, when England — now guided
by a ministry in which Canning and Castlereagh were the
leading men — descended upon Copenhagen, and after bom-
barding the city (September, 1807,) captured and carried off
the whole Danish fleet. Portugal, which also stood aloof
from the continental system, was occupied by the French
(November, 1807), and an army of 100,000 Frenchmen gar-
risoned Spain.
In 1808 the struggle with Napoleon assumed a new phase.
In that year he brutally deposed the rightful king of Spain
and placed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the throne.
The Spanish nation rose in wild revolt, and England sent
men and money to aid them in their six years' struggle, " the
Peninsular War" (1808-1814). Sir Arthur Wellesley, a
friend of Pitt, and a veteran of the wars in India, was the
hero of the English expedition which cleared Portugal of
the French (1808). Sir John Moore, commanding in Spain,
was driven out by an immense force commanded by the
emperor and Marshal Soult (January, 1S09), but in midsum-
mer, when Napoleon had been called away by a new (the
fifth) Austrian war, Wellesley pushed into Spain and
defeated the French at Talavera. For this he w r as created
13
290 Ax Outline History of England.
Viscount Wellington, and from this time the English hoped
they had found a general. Yet they gave him meager sup-
port, and though he clung tenaciously to Portugal it was not
until 1812 that the English gained a firm foothold in Spain.
In that year Napoleon led half a million men into the
heart of Russia to compel the czar to observe the continental,
system. He was forced to retreat, and Prussia, Russia, and
Austria joined a new coalition with England to put an end
to his career. In the three days' Battle of the Nations at
Leipzig (October 1G, 18, 19, 1813), Napoleon received his
first great defeat. The withdrawal of the French troops
from Spain for the emperor's army gave Wellington his
opportunity. In 1813 he expelled the French from the
Peninsula and followed them into their own terj-itory. As
lie entered France from the south the allies crossed the Rhine
and pressed toward Paris. All that Napoleon's military skill
could do was done to save the capital, but the forces against
him were overwhelming. On March 21, 1814, the king of
Prussia and the emperor of Austria entered Paris. The em-
peror of the French abdicated his throne and left France, the
allies giving him the island of Elba.
The war did not end with the abdication of Napoleon.
While the allies were quarreling over the settlement of
Europe, Bonaparte left Elba and re-entered France. His
old soldiers joined him. The powers of Europe hastily re-
newed their alliance. Two great armies, the English under
Wellington, and the Prussians under Bliicher, were assembled
in Belgium. On the 14th of June, 1815, Napoleon crossed
the Belgian frontier, endeavoring to crush each force before
its juncture. Wellington's victory at Waterloo, June 18, de-
stroyed the emperor's hopes ; he gave himself up to the British
government, and was imprisoned on the island of St. Helena,
where he died May 5, 1821. In the Congress of Vienna the
allies stripped France of her conquests, England's share being
the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, Malta, and a few small islands.
House of Hanover, or Brunswick. 291
The United States had suffered severely from the enforce-
ment of the laws against trade by which France and En-
gland had waged their commercial war. American vessels
had been seized and searched, and the British practice of
impressing alleged English seamen found on American vessels
was especially galling. After vain remonstrances, the United
States declared in 1812 the second war with England. The
land operations were generally unimportant. The American
invasions of Canada were repulsed, and the British incursions
from the north met with discouragement and defeat. On the
sea the few vessels flying the stars and stripes were generally
victorious in a number of hard-fought duels with British
men-of-war. The cessation of hostilities in Spain enabled
England to strengthen her forces in the "New World, and in
the summer of 1814 her troops burned the public buildings
of Washington, but were beaten off from their attack on
Baltimore. In December General Jackson repulsed the Brit-
ish at New Orleans, after the treaty of peace had been signed.
Since the king's insanity in 1811 the Prince of Wales, a
frivolous man of fashion, had been regent, though lie left the
government entirely to his ministers. They had many per-
plexities. High prices and low wages stirred the laboring
classes against their employers. "Luddites," attributing
the scarcity of work to the introduction of machinery, tra-
versed the country in riotous bands, breaking looms and
spinning-frames. Laws restricting the importation of foreign
grain raised the price of breadstuflfs, enriching the agricult-
urist at the expense of the bread-winner. Fresh and loud
demands were heard for the reform of Parliament and the
emancipation of the Catholics. The abolition of the slave-
trade in 1807 crowned the labors of Pitt, Fox, Clarkson, and
Wilberforce, but the other needed reforms remained unexe-
cuted when the aged monarch, George the Third, blind and
broken, died at Windsor, January 20, 1820.
George IV. had already been regent for nine years when
292 An Outline History of England.
he became king at the age of fifty-seven. He left the gov-
ernment entirely to his ministers, who reluctantly yielded to
the growing demands for reform. In the first year of the
reign a plot — called, from the meeting-place of the con-
spirators, the "Cato Street conspiracy" — which aimed at the
assassination of the entire cabinet was discovered. Arthur
Thistlewood and four accomplices were hanged. The trouble
grew out of a meeting of radical reformers at St. Peter's
Fields, Manchester, in August, 1819. The government had
broken up that gathering with bloodshed, which gave it the
name of the " Manchester Massacre." The plot to kill the
ministers was a project of revenge.
At the close of the Napoleonic wars, three nations, Russia,
Austria, and Prussia, formed the "Holy Alliance," which
they employed to repress the liberalizing influences which the
French revolution had let loose in Europe. Canning, the
leading minister of George IV., placed England on the side
of the " liberals," early recognizing the independence of the
revolted Spanish- American republics, helping Portugal against
Spain, and lending aid to the Greeks in their war for inde-
pendence with the Turk. In this administration, also, Mr.
.Huskisson relieved imports and exports of some of their
burdens. The staunch Tory ministry of the duke of Wel-
lington, the hero of Waterloo, and Robert Peel came into
power in 1828, and was forced by circumstances to grant
Catholic emancipation. Daniel O'Connell, the Irish orator,
fought for this boon, and in 1829 the government yielded. The
ancient oaths of supremacy, allegiance, and abjuration gave
place to a new form which a Roman Catholic might take with-
out offending his conscience ; membership in Parliament and all
offices, save the regency, the chancellorship, and the vice-roy-
alty of* Ireland, were thrown open to the Catholics. This was as
far as the conservative Tories were willing to go in the path of
'reform. There they stood when the death of the king, June
26, 1830, brought his brother to the throne as William IV.
Conclusion. • 293
CHAPTER XVI.
CONCLUSION. 1830 A. D.-1890 A. D.
FROM THE ACCESSION" OF WILLIAM IV. TO THE PRESENT TI5IE.
William IV, the eldest surviving son of George III.,
succeeded to the thrones of Great Britain and Hanover at the
death of his brother George IV, June 26, 1830, beingthenin
his sixty-fifth year and without legitimate children. His
education had been imperfect, and in his long service in the
navy this sailor-prince — "royal tarry-breeks " as Robert
Burns called him — had shown no real ability. He was a
■better king than captain, and accepted with more grace than
his predecessors the subordinate position into which the
development of parliamentary rule had forced the monarch.
The reform of Parliament was the question which over-
shadowed all others in the public mind. All recent efforts to
improve the system of electing members of the House of
Commons had failed on account of the inborn English
opposition to change, an opposition confirmed by the excesses
of the French Revolution. The writings of William Cobbett,
a self-taught journalist, who had sprung from the common
people himself, and had lived a number of years in the
United States, gave a new impulse to the efforts for reform.
Throughout the regency and the reign of George IV., how-
ever, the government declined to act. The duke of Wellington
and Sir Robert Peel, bitter opponents of reform, were the
leaders of William IV. 's first cabinet. In the House of Lords
the great duke declared that the present constitution of Parlia-
ment was agreeable to the nation, and should never be altered
with his approval. Such opinions made even the hero of Wat-
294 An Outline History of England.
erloo unpopular, and the king himself was mobbed in London
streets. Pressure became so great that the Tories resigned
before the end of the year, the Whig Earl Grey becoming
prime minister, with Lord John Russell as leader of the House
of Commons. The Commons rejected Russell's Reform Bill
(1831), and in a new Parliament the bill was thrown out by
the Lords after passing the Lower House. The country ran
wild at the endeavors of the aristocracy to stop the progress
of the bill. King William himself yielded, and promised to
create enough new peers to reverse the anti-reform majority,
but he was saved from this extreme resort by the Lords, who
relented. On June 7, 1832, the Reform Bill became a law.
The Tories were in despair at the success of the " Liberals,"
as the reformers were henceforth called, in contrast to the
" Conservatives," who desired to preserve the constitution from
innovations. Wellington believed that England was about
to follow the example of France in 1789, and overthrow all
safeguards of liberty and property. The law which caused
such excitement seems now only beneficial. From the " rot-
ten " boroughs which, through a decline of population, had
lost their right to representation it took one or both members,
distributing one hundred and forty-three seats thus gained
among populous manufacturing cities like Manchester and
Birmingham, the larger counties and newly created boroughs.
The right to vote for members of Parliament was much ex-
tended, although still limited to those possessing property of
a certain value.
The first Parliament chosen in accordance with the new
law met in January, 1833. Wellington expressed the
forebodings of the Conservatives, " We can only hope for the
best ; we cannot foresee what will happen ; but few people
will be sanguine enough to imagine that we shall ever again
be as prosperous as we have been." Yet this first legislature
which fairly represented modern England was not a body of
irresponsible democrats. To its lasting glory it passed a bill
Conclusion. 295
abolishing slavery in every English land (1833), compensating
the slave-holders by a grant of £20,000,000. It also reformed
the poor-laws of Queen Elizabeth, under which vagrancy and
pauperism had multiplied. The " Municipal Corporation Act "
of the following year cleared the town governments of En-
gland and Wales of the antiquated customs which protected
plunder and corruption. The trade monopoly enjoyed for
two centuries by the East India Company was broken up,
though its share in the Indian government was left. In 1S3-4
the king became dissatisfied with his Liberal cabinet and re-
placed the ministry by Peel and Wellington ; but the sentiment
of the country Avas against them, and in April, 1S35, they
resigned and the Whigs (Liberals) came into power with
Lord Melbourne as premier, Lord Palmerston and Lord John
Russell beinnf among his colleagues.
King William IV. died at Windsor Castle at two o'clock in
the morning of June 20, 1S37. At five o'clock the Princess
Alexandrina Victoria, daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent,
George III.'s fourth son, was wakened from a sound sleep and
told that she was queen of Great Britain and Ireland. She
was then but eighteen years old, well educated, and carefully
secluded from the licentious sayings and doings of her uncle's
court. With charming dignity she received the announce-
ment of her succession to the throne, and took the solemn
oaths in the presence of the lords and gentlemen of the
council. Her uncles, George and William, had been kings of
Hanover in the fatherland, but as females might not inherit
that crown, her uncle, Ernest Duke of Cumberland, inherited
that country, which, since the downfall of the German
Empire in the Napoleonic wars, had been ruled by kings
instead of electors. From this time all connection between
England and Hanover ceased, and in 1866 the latter kingdom
became a province of Prussia. In 1S40 the queen married her
German cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a gentle-
man of high character and cultivation, who became very pop-
296 An Outline History of England.
ular in England. Their twenty-one years of happy married
life were terminated by his death in 18G1.
"Chartism" and "Free Trade " were the absorbing public
questions of Victoria's earlier years. The reforms of 1832,
which had horrified the aristocracy and pleased the middle
class, were denounced as inadequate and partial by the leaders
of the working-men. The latter, perceiving the strength
which lay in numbers, asked for a new parliamentary reform
which should admit them to a share in the government.
Their demands, set forth in a petition to which the Irish
orator, O'Connell, gave the name of the " People's Charter,"
were as follows : 1. Parliaments to be elected annually;
2. Manhood suffrage ; 3. Vote by ballot ; 4. Abolition of
property qualification for membership in the House of Com-
mons; 5. Salaries for members of Parliament, and 6. Equal
electoral districts. Nothing in the charter affrights the
present reader. In fact, three of the points — the second,
third, and fourth — have since been adopted; but fifty years
ago the Chartist demands were considered preposterous and
revolutionary. The Commons rejected the petition (June,
1839), and riots ensued which were forcibly suppressed. In
1848 the Chartists again brought forward their grievances,
and London was in such terror that its citizens enrolled them-
selves for its defense, under the conqueror of Naj:>oleon.
The petition, with nearly two million signatures, was duly
presented, but there was no rioting. Wellington did not call
out his troops. The scare blew over, and Chartism, despite
the frantic appeals of its leaders, was laughed out of existence.
The Free Trade agitation was better managed. For the
" protection " of the agriculturists and land-owners of Great
Britain . the culture of grain was fostered by a set of enact-
ments known as " corn-laws." These had been imposed in
the reign of George the Third, and their object was to raise
the price of domestic cereals by collecting heavy duties upon
imported breadstuff's,
Conclusion. 207
A group of thoughtful and able men, among whom Rich-
ard Cobden and John Bright were foremost, protested that
such legislation was to the advantage of the few producers
and to the immense disadvantage of the more numerous con-
sumers. By pamphlet and newspaper, at the hustings and in
Parliament, these men, who in 1838 formed at Manchester the
" Anti-Corn-Law League," labored early and late for the re-
moval of these restrictions upon trade. The law-making
class was also the land-owning class, and it was no easy mat-
ter to extort from them the repeal legislation for which the
people at last became clamorous. The original law of 1815,
which practically shut out foreign wheat, was modified in
1828 by the establishment of a " sliding scale" of duties; as
the price of domestic wheat rose the duty was diminished
and vice versa. The Cobdenites found most support among
the Liberals; and it was to some extent the fear that this
party would bring in Free Trade that led to its overthrow in
1841, and the second elevation of Sir Robert Peel to the head
of the Conservative ministry, among whose younger mem-
bers was Mr. W. E. Gladstone. In 1842 this new cabinet
revised the tariff, renewing or reducing the duties upon many
articles and removing the sliding scale. Famine in Ireland
won Free Trade for Great Britain. The failure of the po-
tato crop of 1845 convinced the prime minister that the
duties upon imported food supplies must be repealed. Lord
Russell, the Liberal leader, declared his conversion to Mr.
Cobden's principle, " buy in the cheapest market and sell in
the dearest." Thereupon Sir Robert went over to the Free
Traders, and though many of his own party deserted him
(Mr. Disraeli among them) he carried, with Liberal assistance,
a measure which not only repealed the corn-laws by gradual
reduction of duties, but utterly abandoned the protectionist
theory. Disraeli, just springing into prominence in the Con-
servative party, wittily said of Peel's sudden adoption of the
Whig Free Trade ideas, " Peel caught the Whigs in bath-
13*
298 Ax Outline History of England.
ing and ran off with their clothes." In June, 1846, the bill
became a law, and at the same time the government was
voted down on a question of Irish government. As he re-
signed his office its leader addressed the Commons in an im-
pressive valedictory, awarding to Cobden the credit for the
new law, and closing with impressive words: "The monopo-
list might execrate me," said Peel, " but it may be that I shall
be remembered with good-will in the abodes of men whose lot
it is to labor and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their
brow — a name to be remembered with expressions of good-will
when they shall recreate their exhausted strength with abun-
dant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer
leavened with a sense of injustice." From the repeal of the
corn-laws dates the supremacy of Free Trade in Great Britain.
After the battle of Waterloo England remained at peace
with European nations for nearly forty years. But the rest-
lessness of the Irish and the constant broils on the distant
frontiers of the empire furnished the army with almost in-
cessant employment. In the very first year of the reign
(1837) a rebellious spirit showed itself in Canada. The in-
surrection was quelled with little bloodshed (1839), and re-
forms in the government, begun in 1840 and extended in
1847, united the Dominion and endowed it with substantial
Home Rule. From 1839 to 1842 the royal arms were di-
rected against China, a nation which was resolutely opposed
to dealings with the West. This " opium war " was fought
in behalf of British East India traders who desired to
open the Chinese market to the opium of India. As China
could make no real resistance, England succeeded in forcing
the iniquitous traffic upon her. The conquerors seized Hong
Kong, and have since held it as a commercial and naval sta-
tion. Other Chinese wars sprang from the ill-blood then
engendered. In 1856 a vessel, the lorcha Arrow, flying the
British flag, was seized by Chinese, and a war ensued which
lasted with an interval of peace until 1860.
Conclusion. 299
Jealousy of Russia inspired a new and lasting dread in the
British mind. The immense domain of the czar in Asia, and
his persistent efforts to extend his boundaries toward the
south, alarmed the government for the safety of British India.
In 1838 England undertook to expel Dost Mohammed, the
Afghan prince or ameer, from his country (Afghanistan) and
to replace him with a friendly sovereign. The plan of inva-
sion was at first successful, and Cabul, the capital, was taken,
hut fortune soon changed and the invaders were repeatedly
beaten, until they were compelled to reinstate the dethroned
sovereign and leave the country. The Afghans promised
safe conduct, and in the winter of 1841-1842 the retreat to-
ward India began. A prey to cold and treachery, the army
was massacred in the mountain passes. Only one man, Dr.
l>rydon, out of the sixteen thousand who began the inarch,
lived to reach the British camps at Jellalabad. England
abandoned her attempt to force the obnoxious sovereign upon
an unwilling people. By a second Avar (1877-1881) Great
Britain established more or less firmly her influence among
the Afghans.
The defense of the empire which Clive and Hastings had
won in India involved Great Britain in a succession of petty
wars, the object of which was the extension of the British
authority to the Himalaya Mountains, the natural northern
boundary of the peninsula of Hindustan. Two wars with
the Sikhs ended in the conquest of the Punjab (1849), in the
north-west, and two campaigns in the north-east ended in the
annexation of British Burmah (1852). In 1856 the rich
province of Oudh came under British rule.
Closely connected with Indian affairs is the Eastern Ques-
tion, which early thrust itself upon the attention of Europe.
The rapid decay of the Ottoman Empire and the ambition of
Russia were the elements of the problem. The Czar Nicholas
remarked of Turkey in 1853, "We have on our hands a
sick man — a very sick man; it will be a great misfortune if
800 An Outline Histobt of England.
one of these days he should slip away from us before the
necessary arrangements have been made/' For nearly forty
years the European nations have been quarrelling- over the
necessary arrangements. England believes that the Russian
possession of Constantinople would imperil her own posses-
sions in India. Russia is unwilling to allow the Bosphorns
— the outlet of Russian Black Sea commerce — to pass into
English or Austrian hands. So the "sick man " is main-
tained alive. Iu 1853 war broke out between Russia and
Turkey, the ostensible ground being the sultan's refusal to
recognize the czar's claims as protector of the Greek Chris-
tians in the Ottoman Empire. Western Europe interfered in
time to save the sick man's inheritance. France, where the
nephew of Bonaparte had recently made himself Emperor
Napoleon III., and England formed an alliance to aid the
Turks. War was declared in 1854, and Lord Raglan, a
pupil of Wellington (who died, deeply lamented, in 1852),
was sent to the Black Sea with a British army, to co-operate
with the French in an attack upon the Russians in the
Crimea. They landed in that peninsula in September, 185-4,
defeated the Russians in the battle of the Alma, and laid
siege for 349 days to the fortress of SebastopoL The
Rus>ians made desperate efforts to beat them off, failing at
Balaklava, October 25, and again at Inkerman, November 5.
In the former engagement occurred the famous "charge
of the Light Brigade,'' when, by the misconstruction of
an order, a detachment of 007 English cavalrymen charged
the whole Russian army. Only 198 men rode back from
" the wild charge they made.*' The sufferings of the allies
in the trenches were terrible; the winter's cold destroyed
hundreds and the cholera of midsummer carried off thou-
sands more. The story of these miseries bore fruit in the
Red Cross commission and the labors of Miss Florence
Nightingale, the hospital nurse. In the autumn of 1855, when
the siege had lasted nearly a year, the Russians evacuated
Conclusion. 301
the town, and the allies marched in. This virtually closed
the " Crimean War," which was formally terminated by the
Peace of Paris in March, 1850, in which Russia renounced
her claims, and Turkey was given a new lease of life.
In the summer of 1857 England stood aghast at the tid-
ings from India. That immense and populous empire was gov-
erned by the East India Company, whose military force con-
sisted almost entirely of native troops, or " Sepoys," officered
by Englishmen. On Sunday, May 10, 1857, the Sepoys at
Meerut mutinied, and killed their officers. The rumor had
spread among them that the British had designs on their re-
ligion; that the greasy cartridges of their new Enfield rifles
were smeared with a mixture of cow's fat and hog's lard — the
cow being the sacred animal of the Hindu and the hog the
unclean beast of the Mohammedan. The mutineers pro-
claimed the native king of Delhi emperor of India, and
called upon their countrymen to exterminate the impious En-
glish. General dissatisfaction with the company's rule fed
the revolt, which rapidly grew to a fanatical rebellion. Be-
fore troops could arrive from England the worst had been
done. At Cawnpore a thousand English of both sexes and
all ages surrendered themselves to the tender mercies of the
merciless Nana Sahib. By his orders the retreating garrison
were shot down, and the women were held in captivity until
General Havelock's approach, when they were butchered.
This Massacre of Cawnpore took place June 27, 1857. In
September the English took Delhi by storm, and deposed the
Mogul emperor. A horde of rebels surrounded Lucknow,
held by Sir Henry Lawrence with a few loyal soldiers and
the English residents. In September General Havelock cut
his way through the ring of the besiegers and brought timely
relief to the garrison. But the ring closed up behind him,
and his little army was saved from massacre two months later
by the arrival of Sir Colin Campbell with troops fresh from
England. The taking of Lucknow in March, 1858, put an
302 An Outline History of England.
end to the mutiny. Parliament relieved the East India Com-
pany of all its share in the government of the Indian Empire,
and on September 1, 1858, the sovereignty of the queen was
proclaimed throughout the peninsula. Thirty years later
(January 1, 1877) the title "Empress of India" was added
to the queen's dignities.
The acute disorder in India was easier to bear than the
chronic malady of Irish discontent. Irish land, Irish religion,
and Irish politics have been the triple source of multifarious
trouble. From Strongbow's first invasion of the island down
to this present year of Grace, there is scarcely a year when
Ireland and England have been in harmony. At the
opening of Victoria's reign the Irish clouds were full of
menace. Daniel O'Connell, who had led the agitation for
Catholic emancipation in the last years of George IV., prom-
ised his countrymen that the early years of Victoria should
witness the " repeal of the union " — meaning the repeal of the
act of 1800, which united Ireland with Great Britain under
the control of Parliament. The Roman Catholics — five
sixths of the Irish nation — had never become reconciled to
the union, and the priests and bishops of that Church became
O'Connell's most active lieutenants in the "repeal campaign."
His magic eloquence stirred Irish patriotism to its depths.
The old Celtic hatred of the Saxon flamed up once more,
and in the re-establishment of the Parliament at Dublin they
hoped to find a balm for all their wounds. In 1843 the Brit-
ish government broke up his meetings. When the Irish people
found that their leader would not fight for Ireland's liberties,
they deserted him.
The failure of the island's single crop (potatoes) brought
famine in its train (1846-1857), and, as the promises of
O'Connell faded, the Irish felt their miseries increase. The
spirit of the times — the year 1848 was marked by "liberal"
uprisings in half the kingdoms of Europe — taught the more
ardent Irishmen to win by force the independence which
Conclusion. 303
O'ConnelPs eloquence had failed to secure. "Young Ire-
land " was organized in the name of liberty by Smith
O'Brien, Mitchell, Meagher, and other hot-headed Celts,
fresh from college or active in journalism. Their reck-
less newspaper attacks upon the British government com-
pelled the authorities to suppress them. Some powder
was burned by the followers, but very little blood was
spilled. The leaders of this "Rebellion of '48" were con-
demned for treason and transported to Australia, whence they
afterward escaped. Secret brotherhoods sprang up in the
wake of the Young Ireland agitation, the most successful of
all being the Fenian Association, bearing the historic name
of the militia of ancient Ireland. This organization nour-
ished between 1858 and 1867, and was especially aided by the
Irish-American soldiers of the American Civil War. Its
head-quarters were in the United States, and the contributions
of Irish-Americans furnished it with the sinews of war. In
1867 an attempt was made to raise Ireland in a general insur-
rection, but it failed utterly ; the execution of a few prisoners
and the temporary suspension of the habeas corpus act re-
stored the appearance of peace in the Emerald Isle.
Mr. William Ewart Gladstone became prime minister in
1868, and inaugurated a new method of dealing with Ireland.
His policy was not to allow Ireland to rule herself, but to
rule her in accordance with Irish ideas. In 1869, the State
Church of Ireland, which had been forced upon an unwilling
nation at the time of the English Reformation, was disestab-
lished. Its government support was removed, and it sank to
the condition of the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and Wes-
leyan denominations, as simply a free and independent organ-
ization. This measure provoked the bitterest denunciations
from the Irish Protestants. The next year Mr. Gladstone
attacked the Irish land tenure system. His land law of 1870
recognized that the tenant had some right to his holding, and
must be compensated for any improvements which he might
304 An Outline History of England.
make. Yet Ireland was not satisfied with these concessions ;
the cry of " Home Rule " — the restoration of the Irish Par-
liament — once raised by O'Connell, repeated in the British
Parliament by Mr. Butt (1870), and afterward (1880) by Mr.
Parnell. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone became a convert to Home
Rule, and resigned his office in consequence of his defeat on
the question in Parliament. Coupled with the Home Rule
agitation was a plea for further reforms in the land-tenure
system, but no satisfactory result has been attained, and the
Irish question, despite the Liberal physicians and the Con-
servative surgeons, remains an open sore.
Since the Sepoy mutiny the British colonies have pros-
pered without serious trouble to the mother country. The
government of Canada has been consolidated and improved,
and the Australian colonies have become populous and pros-
perous States. By wars with the natives, the boundaries of
the British settlements in South Africa have been extended.
In Northern Africa Great Britain has gained control of the
Suez Canal, and exercises a protectorate over Egypt. The
British Empire comprises 9,250,000 square miles, inhabited
by 325,000,000 people.
The legislation of the reign covers a wide field. Cheap
postage and postal telegraphy, the extension of inland and
foreign commerce by means of railroads and fast steam-ships,
the great advance in all departments of manufacture have
given the government a new set of problems to deal with.
Peel's Reform Bill of 1832 has been twice extended. In 1867
the Conservative ministry, in which Lord Derby was chief,
with Mr. Disraeli as leader in the Commons, carried a reform
bill which was characterized as " a leap in the dark." It
greatly lowered the proj)erty qualification for voters, fran-
chising in boroughs all householders who paid poor tax, and
lodgers paying at least £10 yearly rent. County voters
must hold property worth £5 a year, or occupy lands or tene-
ments of at least £12 yearly rental. This act admitted work-
Conclusion. 305
ing-men to full political rights. " Now we must educate the
men whom we have made our masters," said a member of
Parliament. In 1870 the Gladstone government established
a national public school system throughout England and
Wales, in 1871 the same administration abolished the pur-
chase of commissions in the army, and in 1872 substituted
secret ballot for the open method of voting for members of
Parliament. In Mr. Gladstone's second ministry (1880-1S85)
a new reform bill made the elective franchise equal through-
out England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; adding two
million to the number of voters, and bringing the whole num-
ber up to five million, and making the government of
Great Britain more than ever "a government of the people,
by the people, and for the people."
INDEX.
Acre, Siege of, 104.
Acts of Parliament : Corporation, 244 ;
Uniformity, 244 ; Conventicle, 244 ;
Five-Mile, 244; Test. 248; Habeas
Corpus, 249; Mutiny, 258; Bill of
Rights, 258; Triennial, 222, 262;
Settlement, 272; Schism, 269, 270;
Riot, 272; Septennial, 273; Stamp,
280 ; Boston Port Bill, 281.
Addington, Ministry, 2S7.
Afghanistan, 299.
Agricola, Cn. J., 37.
Aidan, 53.
Albert, Prince-Consort, 295.
Albion, 30.
Alfred the Great, 62, 73.
Alliance, Triple, 247; Grand, 260: Holy,
292.
Alva, Duke of, 193, 190.
Amiens, Mise of, 117.
Angles, 43.
Anglesey, 14 ; Druid-seat, 35, 36.
Anlaf, 65.
Anne, Queen, 264 ; death of, 270.
Anne Boleyn, 167, 173.
Annus MirabUis, 246.
Anselm, 89.
Antoninus, 39.
Argyle, Duke of, 223, 252.
Armada, The Spanish, 199.
Armed Neutrality, The, 282.
Arrest of five members, 224.
Arrow, The lorcha, 298.
Arthur, 44.
Arthur of Brittany, 102; death, 108.
Articles of Religion, forty-two, 181.
Arvan family, 28.
Aske, Robert, 170.
Assize, of Arms, 100; of Clarendon, 100;
of Northampton, 100; The "Bloody,"
253.
Athelstan, 65.
Augsburg, League of, 260.
Bacon, Francis, Lord, 208, 209.
Bacon, Roger, 118.
Battles: Baden Hill, 44; Deorham, 45;
Heaven's Field, 52 ; Winwaed, 53 ;
Burford, 56 ; Hengestesdnn, 60 ; Ash-
dune, 62; Brnnanburgh, 66: Stam-
ford Bridge, 76; Hastings (or Senlac),
76; Bouvines, 109; Lewes, 117; Ever-
sham, 117; Stirling, 122; Falkirk,
122; Bannockburn, 126; Borough-
bridge, 126; Crecy, 130; Neville's
Cross, 131; Poitiers, 132; Navarete,
133; Agincourt, 144; Verneuil, 147;
Wakefield, 152; St, Albans, 152;
Northampton, 152; Towton, 152;
Tew T kesbury, 154 ; Hexham, 154 ; Bos-
worth Field, 158; Guinegate, 165;
Flodden Field, 165 ; Solway Moss, 176 ;
Pinkie, 179; Zutphen, 198; Newburn,
220; Edgehill, 225; Marston Moor,
226; Newbury, 227; Nasebv, 228;
Philiphaugh, 228 ; Stow, 228; Preston
Pans, 230 ; Dunbar, 232 ; Worcester
232; Sediremoor, 253; Killiecrankie,
258 ; Newtown Butler, 259 ; the Boyne,
260 ; the Hogue, 260 ; Neerwenden,
262; Blenheim, 266; Ramillies, 266:
Oudenard, 267; Malplaquet, 267;
Sheriffmuir, 273 ; Preston Pans, 275 ;
Falkirk, 275; Culloden, 275; Minden,
277; Montreal, 277; Plassy, 277;
Lexington, Concord, 281 ; Bunker's
Hill, 281; Saratoga,' 282; Yorktown,
282 ; Cape St. Vincent, 286 ; Camper-
down, 286; Vinegar Hill, 286: Nile,
286; Marengo, 2S6 ; Hohenlinden,
286; Baltic, 287; Trafalgar, 289;
Austerlitz, 289 ; Talavera, 289 ; Leip-
zig, 290 ; Waterloo, 290 ; New Orleans,
291; the Alma, 300; Balaklava, 300;
Inkerman, 300.
Ball, John, 138.
Balliol, John, 120.
Bank of England, 262.
Barebones Parliament, 234.
Baronets, 208.
Baxter, Richard, 244.
Beaufort, Bishop Henry, 146.
Beaufort, Edmund, 150.
Becket, Thomas, 98.
Bede, kfc The Venerable/' 56.
Benevolences, 153, 163, 208.
Berlin decree, The, 289.
Bernicia, 45.
Bertha, Queen of Kent, 50.
Bible, King James's version, 206.
Bill of Rights, 258.
Bishops, excluded from Lords, 224.
Bishops rejected, Scottish, 218, 219.
Bishops' Wars, 219, 220.
Black Death, 138.
Black Prince, Edward, 130, 135.
Blake, Admiral, 233.
Boadicea, 36,
Index.
30'
Bombardment of Copenhagen, 289.
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 286.
Bonner, Bloody Bishop, 186.
Bothwell, Earl of. 193.
Buckingham beheaded, 158.
Banyan, John, 228, 244.
Burgh, Hubert de, 113.
Burke, Edmund, 280.
Bute, Lord, 279.
Braddock's campaign, 277.
Breda, Declaration of, 240; Treaty of, 246.
Bretwalda, 46.
Bright, John, 297.
British Isles, 13.
Britons, 28 ; in Caesar's time, 32.
Brownists, 195.
Bruce, Robert, 120; the Younger, 124.
Bruce, David, 129.
Brunswick-Liiueburg, 271.
Cabal ministry, 247, 248.
Cadwallon, 52.
Caedmon, 55.
Caesar in Britain, 81.
Camulodunum, 36.
Calais taken, 131 ; lost, 187.
Caledonia, 37.
Campian, The Jesuit, 195.
Canada acquired, 279.
Canning, Georpe, 292.
Canterbury Tales, 136.
Canterbury, Archbishopric of, 50.
Canute, 71.
Cape of Good Hope, 290.
Caradoc, 35.
Carey, Lucius, Lord Falkland, 221.
Caroline, Queen of England, 274.
Carr, Robert, Earl of Somerset, 208.
Cassivelaunus, 32.
Catharine, Queen of Charles II., 245.
Catharine of Aragon, 164, 167, 168.
Catherine de Medici, 190.
Catholic Emancipation, 212.
Cavaliers, 225.
Cawnpore, Massacre of, 301.
Cecil, Robert, 202,208.
Cecil, William, Lord Burleigh, 190.
Celts, 28.
Cerdic, 44.
Ceylon, 287.
Charles I., 208; kirn?, 212; beheaded, 230.
Charles II. of England, 232 ; restored, 240 ;
marriage, 24."> ; death, 250.
Charles Edward Stuart, 275.
Charles V., 165, 183.
Charles VII. of France, 1 16.
Chateau Gaillard, 106, 108.
Chartism, 296.
Chaucer, 136.
Chronicle, The English, 64.
Churchill, John, 256; treachery, 261.
Clarendon, Constitutions of, 99.
Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 244.
246.
Clarence, Duke of, 154, 155.
Claudius, 35,
Claverhouse, Graham of, 252 ; death, 258.
Clement VII., Pope, 167.
Climate, 17.
Clive, Robert, 277.
Cloth of Gold, The Field of the, 166.
Cobden, Richard, 297.
Cobbett, William, 293.
Coke, Sir Edward, 209.
Commonwealth established, 231.
" Conformity, Occasional," 273.
Congress, Continental, 281.
Conservatives, 294.
kt Continental System," The, 289.
Conventicle Act, 214.
Convention, 239.
Cook, Captain James, 283.
Corn Laws, 296 ; repeal of, 297.
Corporation Act, 244.
Courtenay, Henry, of Exeter, 171.
Covenant, The Scottish, 219 ; taken in En-
gland, 226.
Covenanters, Persecution of, 252.
Coverdale's Bible, 172.
Cranmer, Archbishop, 168, 179, 185.
Crimean War, 300.
Cromwell, Oliver, 213, 217; colonel, 225;
army leader, 230 ; in Ireland and
Scotland, 232; Lord Protector, 235;
death, 239.
Cromwell, Richard, 237.
Cromwell, Thomas, 168.
Crusades, First, 90.
Cumberland, Duke of, 275.
Cumberland, Ernest, Duke of, 295.
Cunobelin, 35.
Cuthred, 56.
Cymri, 29.
Cynric, 44.
Danby, Thomas Osborne, Earl of, 248, 255.
Dane-geld, 70.
Dane-law, 63, 65.
Danes, 56 ; in Ireland, 60 ; in England, 60 ;
massacre of, 71 ; conquer England,
71.
Darnley, Henry, Lord, 192.
Declaration of Liberty of Conscience. The,
254.
Declaration of Rights, 257.
Defender of the Faith, 172.
Deira, 45.
Despenser, Huirh le, 125.
Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex, 200, 201.
Disestablishment of Irish Church, 303.
Disraeli, Benjamin, 297.
Divine Right of Kings, 206.
Divorce of Henry VIII., 167.
Doomsday Booh, 86.
Douglas, James, 193.
Dover, Secret treaty of, 247.
Drake, Sir Francis, 197, 198, 199, 200.
Drogheda, Storming of, 232.
Druids, 33.
Dryden, John, 246.
Dudley, John, Earl of Warwick and
Northumberland, 182.
-
Index.
Dudley, Robert, Karl of Leicester, 197.
Dudley, Lord Guilford, 18S
Dunkirk, Sale of, S
Duple. \
Aversion of, 51
Eastern Qui - 899.
s -
Bdbald of Nortnumbria,
Edgar, 69.
Edgar the Atheling, 75.
Edith, 74.
Edmund Ironside,
Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, 138.
Edmuud the Magnificent,
Edred,
Edward the Confess
Edward the I
Edward l.. " Longsnanks," 117; death,
184,
Kdward the Martyr. 70.
Edward II.. of Carnarw .
Edward III., of Windsor,
Edward v., 156.
Edward VL, 178, ITT.
Edward, son of Henry VL, ISO, 155.
Edwm of Northumberlan I
Edwin and Morcar, Revolt of, 79,
Edwy. -
Egbert of Wessex,
Elinbeth, Queen of Bohemia, 909, on.
. eth, Queen of Henry VII., u
160
Elizabeth. Queen. 169, 308.
Saxon King, 44.
Emma of Normand
Emperor and Dudley. 164.
sh, 4-3; religion. 46; government,
47 ; eonve: - ; system com-
pared with Norm..
Essex. 4o; conversion of , 50,
Ethelhald of Wessex. 60.
Ethelbert of Kent. 50.
Ethelburga of Northumberland, 51.
Ethelfled. iM.
Ethehvd of Morel.-..
Ethelred I. of Wessex. 60.
Ethehvd II.. the Unready, 70.
Etheiwoif of Wessex
. Prince of Savoy, ^k>.
Excise I'ax. .
Fairfax. Sir Thomas, 886, 837.
Famine in Ir
-.
Fenian Lss
Feudal Syste
Finch. Speato
Fisher. Bishop of Rochester, 169.
Five-Mile Act. 944,
sbern, William. 79,
Vox. Charles James,
Frederick the Great)
Free Trade. 896.
3, 118.
3, 89,
Gardiner, Bishop. 176, 179.
i. aunt. John of, 133, 140.
Gaveston, Tiers. 185,
Geddes, Jenni . B
Genealogies : Norman Pukes, 70 : House
of Oerdic, 61 ; English sovereigns,
9-12; Danish kings, it; House of
Godwin, 74; Edward's claim to
French crown, 160; Descent of
Henry iv.. 141 ; Lancaster and York,
151; Spanish succession. 866; Han-
over or Brunswick,
Geoffrey, son of Henry U., 101,
George L, 869 : died,
George II., 874.
George 111.. 878; death of. 891.
George IV., regent, 284; king, 891; death.
89&
. Prince of Denmai
Gibraltar taken. 866, 869.
3 me, w. f... 897.
Glenooe, Massaciv .
Glendower, 14.C.
Qodiva,
. - i
Godwin,
Gordon. Lord George, 888.
Grand Alliance. 860; renewed, 864.
Ft rand Jury. 100,
Grattan's Parliament, 878
Great Britain, 15,
Great Contract. The,
Gregory vn. (Hildebrand . B4,
Gregory the Great, " ,
Grenviile. Lord George,
Grey, Lady Jane, 164,
Grey, Lady Elizabeth, 154.
Guthrum the Dane. 68.
Gwyn, Nell, i
Habeas Corpus Ac:.
Hadrian. 88.
Hampden, John, 81
Hampton Court Conference .
Hanover, 869; Genealogy,
Hanover, separated from England, 895.
Sardicanute, 78.
Barley, R rtwrt, - B, 873.
Harold. tt.
Harold, sou of Godwin, 7o.
Harold Hardrada, 7o.
Hastings the Pane.
Hastings, Warren. .
Hawkins. J ihn, 197.
Hengist and Horsa, 43.
Henrietta Maria. Queen - ... 811,
818.
Henry III. v of Winchester', 118,
Henry IV.
Henry V. ^of Monmouth), 148.
Henry VI., 145, 140; death. 155.
Henry VII. u>f EiehtuoikP, 137, 166.
Index.
no9
Henry VIII., 168; divorce, 167; death, 176.
Henry, the Young King, 101.
Heptarchy, The Saxon, 45.
Heresy, Btatute of, 142.
Hereward, 80.
Hlbernla, 80.
High Commission, Court of, 195, 217;
abolished, 222.
Hill, Abigail (Lady Masham), 268.
Holland, Wars with, 245, 247.
Holy League, The, it..
Holy Isle, i"'.
Home Rule, Irish, 804.
Hong Kong, 298.
Honorius, 40.
Hotspur, in.
Howard, Admiral, Lord, 199,
Howard, Catharine, 174.
Huguenots, 190, 191; in England, 283.
Hundred Years' War, The, 129, 1 18.
Hyde, Edward Lsee Clarendon]; Anne,
wife of James II., 251.
Idylls of the King, 45.
Impositions, 207.
Independence, Declaration of, 281.
India Company, British East, chartered,
202, Conquer Bengal, 277.
Indulgence, Declaration of, 217, 218.
Ine, 5B.
Innocent III., 108.
Instrument of Government, the, 285.
Iona, 14 ; St. Columba at, 49.
Ireland, and Henry II., 100; StrongbOW,
101 ; Union of England and, 28i .
Ireton, 282.
Irish Rebellion of '48, 303,
Ironsides, Cromwell's, 225.
Isabella, Infanta of Spain, 209, 211.
Jacobite, 208; rising of '15, 272; rising
of '45, 275.
Jamaica, 230.
.James I. born, 192; King of Scots, 193;
King of England, 202.
James II., Duke of York, 240 ; in navy, 240 ;
resigns, 248; recalled, 250; king, 251;
deposed, 250; died, 264.
James Francis Edward Stuart born, 251.
Jennings, Sarah (Churchill), 205.
Jesuits, 189, 195.
Joan of Arc, 147.
John, 101 ; king, 107; quarrel with pope,
108; death, 111.
John, Duke of Bedford, 140.
Junius, Letters of, 280.
Jutes, 43,
Kent, Landing of Romans in, 31 ; Jutisb
kingdom of, 43.
Ket, Robert, 181.
"Kingmaker, The, 1 ' See Warwick, 151.
Kirke's Lambs, 253.
Knox, John, 193.
Laborers, Statutes of, 138.
Lancaster, House of, 151.
Lancaster, Thomas, Earl of, 125.
Land law, Irish, 808,
Language, Rise of English, 185.
Langton, Archbishop Stephen, iuh.
Lanfranc, 84.
Latimer, Hugh, 180. 185.
Laud, Archbishop, 215, 222, 227.
League, The, 197.
Leo iv., Pope, 62.
Leofrlc, 73.
Liberals, 294.
Lichfield, Archbishopric of, 57.
Light Brigade, Charge of , 300.
Lindlsfarne, 53; 55.
Lionel, Luke of Clarence, 137.
Lollards, 130; laws against, 142.
Londlnlum, 37.
London, lire, 266; plague, 266.
Londonderry, Siege of, 259.
Longchamp, William, lot.
Lontf Parliament, elected, 221 ; purged,
230; dissolved, £34 ; finally dissolved,
239.
Lords, House of, abolished, 280.
Louis XIV., 245; pensions Charles [I., 247;
subsidizes James If., 252.
Lucknow, Defense of, 301.
Luddites, 291.
Luther, Martin, 171.
Magna Charta, 110.
.Major-Geuerals, The, 230.
Manchester massacre, The, 292.
Mansfield's expedition, 211.
Manufactures, 284.
Mar, Earl of, 272.
Margaret, queen of Henry VI., 149, 153.
Margaret the Athellng, 75, 89;
Marlborough, See Churchill, 205, 209.
Marshall, William, 113.
Mary, Queen of Scots, 163, 170, r83, 192,
193, 198.
Mary, Queen of England, 169, 173, 187.
Mary, daughter of .James II., marriage,
2 IS; queen, 257; death, 202.
Mary of Modena, queen of James II., 251.
Massachusetts Ray Colony, 216.
Mercia, 45 ; conversion of, 53.
Methodist Revival, The, 278.
Middlesex, 45.
Milton, John, 244.
Monasteries, 09, 109.
Monk, General, 233, 231, 239, 215.
Monmouth, Duke of, 249; expedition, 253.
Monopolies abandoned, 202.
Montague, 201.
Montfort, Simon de, 115.
Montrose, Marquis of, 220.
Moore, Sir John, 289.
More, Sir Thomas, 109.
Mortimer, Anne, 150.
Mortimer, Edmund, 141.
Mortimer, Roger, 127.
" Morton's Fork," 103.
Mutiny Act, 258.
:U0
NPEX.
Nana Sahib, 901.
Nantes, Revocation of Edict of, 953.
Newfoundland, S9S8.
New Model, The. 828, 940.
Newspapers, 268.
New York taken from Dutch, 015.
Nightingale, Florence, 800,
Nimeguen, Treaty of. 04S.
" No Popery " riots, OS 3.
Non-jurors, 957.
Norfolk, Duke of. 174.
Normans in Europe, The,
North, Lord. 861.
Northumbria. 45 ; conversion of, 51.
Nova Seotia. 969.
Gates. Titus. 948.
O'OonneU, Daniel. OTC. 909.
Odoof Bayeux, ! 96,88.
Offa, 56.
Oldcastle. Sir John, 143.
Opium War. 998.
"Ordainers," The.
Orders in Council, 0S9.
Ordinances. 994,
Ostorius, 36.
Oswald, kin? of Northumbria, 59.
Oswv of Northumberland, 53.
'• Other House, The," 887.
Oxford, Provisions of, HO; University of,
US.
Palmerstou, Lord, 005.
Pandulf.109, in. 114.
Paradise Lout, 044.
Parsons, the Jesuit. 195.
Parker, Archbishop, 189.
Parliament, Great, so-called, 115; Mont-
fort's, 117; of Edward I., 193; in two
Houses, 103; the Merciless. 139 ; the
Addled, 007; the Short, 980; Lonir.
991 : Rump, 030 ; Barebones. 034 ;
Corruption of. 079.
Parr. Catherine, 176.
" Patriots, Seven." The, 055.
Paulinus. Suetonius. 36.
Peel, Sir Robert. 093.
Pelham. Cabinet of, 075, 976.
Peuda. kin? of Men-ia, 50.
Peninsular War. !
Pennine Chain, 15.
Petition, Millenary, The, 004.
Petition of Rights, The, 014.
Petre, 858.
Philip II. of Spain. 184, 1S6, 187.
Picks. 39.
Pilgrimage of Grace, 107.
Pilgrim'* Progress, 044.
Pitt, W., Lord Chatham. 976, 978, 880.
Pitt, W. (the Young), 0-3. 888.
Plautius. Aulus. 35.
Plots: Ridolfl's, 194; Babington's, 19S ;
Gunpowder. 906; Popish, 948; Bye
House, 050 ; Cato Street. 090.
Popish Plot. -
Pra?niuuire, Statute of, 141.
Prayer-book, English. 180.
Presbyterianism, Established in England,
836 9tf!
Presbyterians. 005 ; Scottish. 01S. 999.
Pretender, The Young, 875.
Pretender, The Old, OtVj, 968, 979, 897,
975.
Pride's Purge, 990.
"Protestation. The," 010.
Prvnue, William. 017.
Puritans. 194, 904.
Pvm, John. 013,001. 003.
Pytheas, 30.
Bagnor, Lodhrog, 0(3.
Raleigh, Sir Walter. 001, 010.
Ranulf, Flambard, SS.
Banulf, Glanville, 109.
Kedwald. of East Amrlia, 51.
Reform Bill. 994.
Reformation. English, 168, 170. 180.
Remonstrance, The Grand, 003.
Restoration. 040.
Revolution. The French. -
Revolution of 'SS. 957.
Richard I., 101 : kiue, 103 ; death. 107.
Richard II., 137.
Richard III.. 155, 15S.
Richard. Duke of York. 150.
Richard. " Kim: of the Romans," 115.
Ridlev, ISO, 1S5.
Rizzio, Murder of, 193.
Robert. Duke of Normandy, S5, 90.
Roches. Peter des. 113.
Roehelle, Expedition to, 013.
Bockingham, Ministry, 880, 0S1.
Rogers, John,
Roman Invasion, SI ; Conquest, 95-36';
Evacuation. 40 ; Influence, 41.
Roses. Wars of the, 150, 15S.
Roundheads, 005.
Rump. The. 030, 031. 034 ; dissolved. 039.
Rupert, Prince, 005, 006, 04(3.
Bunnymede, no.
Russell, Lord John, 294.
Rye House Plot, 050.
St. Augustine, 50.
St. Bartholomew, Massacre of, 196.
St. Chad, 53.
St. Cuthbert, 53.
St. Dunstan, 6S.
St. Edmund. 68.
St. John, Henrv, Lord Bolinebroke. 968,
979,
St. Patrick, 49.
Saint's Best, 944.
Sarsfleld, Patrick, 060.
Saxons. 39.
Scone, Stone of, 181.
Scotland. 88; Del of England, 109; inde-
pendent, 104.
Scots, 39.
Scutaee, 99.
Sebastopol, Siege of, 300.
Seminary Priests, 195.
NDEX.
311
Separatists, 195.
Sepoy Revolt, The, 801.
en Bishops," The, 254.
Seven Years' War, 276.
Severn, 16.
Severus, 89.
Seymour, Edward, 178.
Seymour, Jane, 173.
Shaftesbury, Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 217,
248, 249.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 282.
Ship-money, The, 210.
Shires, ik.
Shrewsbury, Duke of. 270.
Sidney, sir Philip, 198.
Slmnel, Lambert, 161.
Si ward, 72.
Six Articles, 172; repeal, 180.
I rery abolished, :.'.»"-.
si. ,-e-trade abolished, 291.
Somerset. (8ee Edward Seymour.)
Sophia of Hanover, 268.
South Sea Bubble, 269, 27:;.
k 'Spurs, The Battle of the," 165.
Stafford, Edward, 166.
Star ('handier, 163, 216; abolished, 222.
Btonehenge, 24, 35.
Strafford 'see Wentworth).
Strathclyde, 40; conquered, 50.
Sunderland, 201.
Sussex, 44.
Sweyn, 71.
"Tables, The," 219.
Talbot, Richard, Earl of Tyrconnel, 259.
Taylor, Rowland, 1*5.
Temple, Sir William, 247.
Test Act, 248.
Thames, 16, 21.
Theaters of Restoration, 244.
Theodore of Tarsus, 54.
Theodosius, 40.
Theresa, Empress Maria, 275.
Thirty-nine Articles, The, 192.
Thirty Years' War, 210.
Thistlewood, Arthur, 293.
>b Thorough," Stafford's policy of, 215.
Tilbury, Elizabeth's speech at, 199.
Tin Islands, 30.
Tonnage and Poundage, 102.
Tower. Princes murdered in the, 150.
Tory, 249.
Treaties: Wedmore, 03; Northampton,
128; Troves, 145; Breda, 210; Dover
(secret), 247 ; Nimeguen, 2 18 ; Limerick,
260; Ryswick, 262; Utrecht, 269; Aix-
la-Chapelle. 2:5; Paris, 270; Campo
Forinio, 28(5; Liineville, 280; Amiens,
287 ; Tilsit, 289 ; Paris, 301.
Trent, Council of, 175.
Tudors, Origin of, 157.
Tyler, Wat, 138.
Tyndale, William, 172.
Tyrone's Irish revolt, 201.
Ulster, Massacre of
Uniformity, Act of, 211.
" United Irishmen," 286.
United States, 281.
Vane, sir .'fan
Verulamium
Vespasian, •".<;. -':7.
Victoria, Queen, 295; Empress, 802.
Vienna, Congress of, 290.
Vikings, 59.
Timers, George, jjuk.i of Buckingham,
208; death, 211.
Vortigern, 43.
Wales, Annexation of, 120; Incorporated
with England, 177.
Wallace, William, 121.
Walpole, Robert, 274.
Walsingham, Sir Erancis, Vm.
Walter, Hubert, 105, 108.
Warbeck, Perkln, 161.
Warwick, Earl of, 152,151.
War, Hundred Years', 129,
War of Spanish Succession, 263.
W T ar, Second, of United States with En-
gland, 291.
Washington, George, 270,281.
Wellington, 289.
Welsh, origin of name, 41.
Wentworth, Sir Thomas, Earl of Strafford,
213,215; beheaded, 222.
Wesleys, The,
Wessex, 44; conversion of, 53 ; supremacy
of, 58.
Westminster Assembly, 227.
Wexford, Massacre of, 232.
Whig, 211).
Whip of Six Strings, 172.
Whitby, Synod of, 54.
Wiclif, John, 130.
Wight, Isle of, 14.
Wilkes, John, 279.
William If. (Rufus), 87.
William III., 257.
William IV., 293.
William of Malmesbury, 05.
William of Normandy, 74 ; king of En-
gland, 177 ; death, 87.
William of Orange, stadthoHer, 247 ;
marriage, 248; in England, 250; king,
257; death, 20}.
William the Silent, 190, 197.
Winchelsey, Archbishop, 123.
Witenagemot, 47. 81.
Wolfe. General, 277.
Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal, 105, 167.
Wykeham, William of, 134.
York, archbishopric of, 54.
York, House of, 151.
" Young Ireland," 303.
H 66 891
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